Pino Sees Life Again As A Paper Doll

We've posted about robot paper models before, so we weren't suprised when one of our Japanese readers told us there is a delightful paper robot model on the RoboSquare website. However, we were surprised and delighted when we checked out the link only to find out the robot was our old friend, Pino!

The RoboSquare organization, based in Fukuoka, Japan, is based on the ideas and concepts of Hiraki Kitano, one of the most well known and respected Japanese robotics leaders. He is also the founding president of Robocup and a senior researcher at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories.

The primary objective of the organization is to create the "Silicon Valley of Robotics." Of course that includes proactive efforts to promote robotics among all age groups - including paper model fans of all ages.

For those of you who might not remember, in Hikaru Utada's music video "Can You Keep A Secret", Pino was featured as the singer's boyfriend. Fully functional Pino robots were sold in Japan a few years ago in three different sizes, and more recently have come on the market in the U.K. Although it was never actively marketed in the U.S., you can sometimes find used Pino robots available on eBay.

The finished robot model is 3 dimensional
and amazingly faithful to the real thing.

The pdf files are in Japanese, but
are easy to understand from the drawings.

The RoboSquare 'Robo-Craft' webpage

On the target page you will see three links to
download the pdf files. The first file has the
overall instructions. The other two files include
the actual robot pattern to be printed, cut out,
and assembled.