A walking Gundam model kit

Japan is full of plastic model kits based on the giant spacefaring robots in the incredibly popular Mobile Suit Gundam anime series. Major toymaker Bandai has made over five hundred different kinds of ganpura models since the early 1980s, but they're all just polystyrene assemblages and can't move. The latest robot creation by the government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), though, seems like a Gundam collectible that's come to life.

The HRP-2m Choromet is 35 cm tall, weighs 1.5 kg and has 20 degrees of mechanical freedom. A product of the AIST Intelligent Systems Research Institute and four venture firms, Choromet is a miniature version of the 154-cm HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot and was also developed for research and education purposes. Like its full-sized sibling, Choromet's appearance was designed by Gundam and Patlabor mechanical designer Yutaka Izubuchi. Choromet, which runs on an AIST-developed Linux application, can get up from a prone position and stand on one leg. See the video here.

"They are perfect as teaching material to study humanoid robot control methods, and I want them to be used in places such as university laboratories," Hirohisa Hirukawa, scientific leader of the AIST Humanoid Research Group, was quoted as saying by Mainichi Daily News.

Choromet is to go on sale this fall for half a million yen each, much less than the 8 million yen annual rental fee for Promet. I wonder how many Gundam fanatics will add Choromet, the ultimate ganpura, to their collections.