With CanguRo, a new relationship between machines and humans in the era of artificial intelligence has been created. Blessed with advanced robotics and AI technologies, this three-wheeled robot is an independent yet friendly partner, capable of self-driving and following human walk via smartphone commands. Besides, when it transforms, CanguRo becomes a personal transporter providing an actual ride. Its concept is to offer the joy of moving and to activate people’s daily lives.

Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo), established in 2003, has created many robots including survey robots used for the damage inspection in the nuclear disaster site at Fukushima (later displayed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York) and household vacuum cleaner robots through a joint effort with the industry. CanguRo, our latest robot capable of self-driving, following a walking human as well as transforming to a vehicle, was recently on display at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum at New York and on the Design Museum at London.

Shunji Yamanaka is a design engineer and professor at the University of Tokyo. After graduating from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Tokyo in 1982, he joined Nissan Motors Design Center. In 1987 he started practice as an independent freelance designer, going on to found Leading Edge Design in 1994. Served as a professor at Keio University from 2008 to 2012. He has been a professor at the University of Tokyo since 2013. While designing a wide range of industrial products from wristwatches to railroad cars, he has been involved as an engineer in the fields of robotics and telecommunication technology. In 2004 he received Mainichi Design Awards, iF Good Design Awards (Germany), and many other Good Design Awards. His work Tagtype Garage Kit was chosen as one of the permanent collections by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2010. In recent years he has been studying a new relationship between human beings and materials, represented in his works Beautiful Prosthetic Legs, Humanoid Robots and Robotic Vehicles. Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo) at Chiba Institute of Technology was established in 2003. Led by a pioneering robot researcher, Dr. Takayuki Furuta, engineers and researchers have gathered to conduct research and development of key technologies of the next generation. Its famous achievements include the surveyor robots used repeatedly in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.