Hitachi, Ltd. 日立制作所
Tokyo industrial and IT group behind the EMIEW wheeled humanoids, which also runs robotic-line integrators JR Automation, Hitachi Automation and Kyoto Robotics.
Hitachi, Ltd. (Kabushiki Kaisha Hitachi Seisakusho) is a Japanese industrial, energy, mobility and IT group headquartered at 6-6 Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. The company traces its origins to 1910 and its incorporation to 1 February 1920. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (code 6501). Its president and CEO is Toshiaki Tokunaga. For the fiscal year ended March 2026 it reported consolidated revenues of about 10.59 trillion yen, with 287,901 employees across the group. Robotics is a small part of Hitachi's business, but the company has a long record of humanoid service-robot research and a growing robotic systems-integration (SI) operation.
EMIEW humanoids. Hitachi's Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory developed the EMIEW series (Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existence as Workmate) of wheeled humanoid robots meant to work among people. The first EMIEW (2005), developed under a NEDO next-generation robot programme with the University of Tsukuba, was 130 cm tall and weighed about 70 kg. It balanced on two wheels, reached 6 km/h with 4 m/s squared maximum acceleration, had 6-DoF arms and 1-DoF hands, could talk with people at 1 m without a headset microphone and could locate sound sources through 360 degrees. EMIEW2 (2007) added customer-guidance functions: autonomous movement at walking pace, voice isolation from background noise, web-based object identification and the use of building network cameras as extra eyes. EMIEW3, announced in April 2016, is a 90 cm, 15 kg robot that keeps pace with walkers at up to 6 km/h, crosses 15 mm steps, can get up again after being knocked over, and seeks out customers who look like they need help. It runs on a remote-brain robotics IT platform: speech, image and language processing run in the cloud, real-time control stays on board, and staff can monitor and restore several robots at multiple sites remotely. Hitachi offered EMIEW3 for proof-of-concept service trials with customers through its NEXPERIENCE co-creation process rather than as a catalogue product.
Robotic SI and logistics robots. Since 2019 Hitachi has built up robotic systems integration through acquisitions. JR Automation, a US integrator of automated production and test lines, was acquired in 2019 and serves mainly North America and Europe. KEC Corporation, a Japanese integrator with welding-process expertise, was also acquired in 2019. In April 2021 Hitachi took about 96% of Kyoto Robotics Corporation, a 2000 Ritsumeikan University spin-off in Kusatsu, Shiga, that makes teaching-free picking, palletizing and depalletizing robot systems. Those systems use 3D vision, which the company rates at 99.99% recognition accuracy for single-item depalletizing, plus AI motion and load planning, and more than 400 had been delivered in Japan. Hitachi combines them with the Racrew compact automated guided robot from Hitachi Industrial Products and with conveyors, linked to customers' WCS and WMS software. In April 2022 Hitachi set up Hitachi Automation, Ltd. (about 200 employees at launch) to provide turnkey robotic SI for assembly and conveyor lines in Japan and ASEAN, alongside Kyoto Robotics. These businesses sit in the Industry and Distribution unit and are tied to Hitachi's Lumada digital platform.
RobotToday lists Hitachi in its humanoid landscape as a large-company developer of wheeled humanoids, based on the EMIEW line.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
EMIEW3 humanoid service robot
90 cm, 15 kg wheeled humanoid for customer guidance in stores, stations and airports, run on Hitachi's cloud remote-brain platform with remote multi-site monitoring.
EMIEW2 guidance robot
Second-generation EMIEW with autonomous walking-pace movement, noise-robust voice recognition and building network cameras used as extra eyes for guidance.
Kyoto Robotics intelligent palletizing and depalletizing robot system
Teaching-free picking robot cells that use 3D vision and AI load planning to palletize and depalletize mixed packages; 400+ systems delivered in Japan.
Racrew compact automated guided robot
Compact automated guided robot from Hitachi Industrial Products for conveying in distribution centres, combined with Kyoto Robotics picking cells, conveyors and WCS/WMS.
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Contact Hitachi, Ltd.
WEBSITE
https://www.hitachi.comPHONE
+81-3-3258-1111HEADQUARTERS
Japan
Company Facts
Founded
1910
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Asia-Pacific
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Public
Funding Total
-
