ZMP INC.


The company was established in January 2001, based on the results of the research encouraged the Kitano Symbiotic System Project, under the jurisdiction of Japan‘s MEXT. Their first product released was the humanoid robot PINO in 2001.
The name of the company comes from the Zero Moment Point, a physical quantity related to the dynamics of legged systems.
More recently, they released the humanoid robot nuvo in 2005 and the music robot miuro in 2006.
In 2009, the research platform for next generation cars RoboCar was released.
In 2008, ZMP and 3 other Japanese robot companies teamed up in an effort to promote the diffusion of robotic technologies in everyday life. This effort was called the 'Association for Market Creation of the Future Generation Robots'.
In July 2015, Sony teamed up with ZMP Inc. to form a Joint venture called Aerosense, to create commercial drones for the survey and inspection of difficult to access areas. The following month, Aerosense released videos of two prototypes, the AS-DTO1-E VTOL, and the AS-MCO1-P quadcopter.

Sony Electric Vehicle

ZMP is also working together with Sony in another area. Google is working on automobile technology, self-driving cars and even perhaps a driverless taxi service. More recently Apple was rumoured to be working on electric vehicles to rival those made by the likes of Tesla. Sony hopes to do well from this emerging self-driving automotive industry and has therefore invested $842,000 in ZMP.

PATORO disinfection robot

To help building managers deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, ZMP is leasing PATORO, an "autonomous security and disinfection robot", for spraying disinfectant over surfaces, such as the hallways of large structures; PATORO also has building security functions.