Welcome, Taku!
Taku is a wheeled semi humanoid robot from DYNA Robotics, designed for commercial environments where mobility and object handling must work together. Its humanlike upper body has 21 degrees of freedom, including two arms with seven joints each, while a folding lower body connects it to a base with four steerable wheels. Standing 170 centimeters tall, it uses two finger gripping claws rather than hands with individually articulated fingers. Its listed handling strength is 10 kilograms. Taku combines vision, touch and proprioception to sense objects and its own configuration during movement. Its demonstrated capabilities include obstacle avoidance, sorting goods, filling and emptying a dishwasher, and folding clothes. These activities emphasize practical manipulation rather than athletic locomotion. An overall score of 4 out of 10 places it in the developing category. Its manipulation rating of 3 out of 5 exceeds its navigation rating of 1 out of 5, indicating a stronger assessed foundation in handling tasks than in mobility.
Taku’s capabilities connect mobile positioning with coordinated arm movements. Obstacle avoidance supports movement through shared work areas, while sorting goods requires selecting, grasping and placing items into appropriate groups. Filling and emptying a dishwasher brings together object handling and placement within a constrained workspace. Folding clothes adds a different manipulation challenge because fabric changes shape as it is lifted and repositioned. The robot’s sensing combines visual information with touch and awareness of joint position. Its software architecture includes a workflow orchestrator, a vision language model, an action policy operating at approximately five updates per second, and a whole body controller operating at 100 updates per second. Together, these components connect task planning with physical control.
Taku is listed as in production, with an advertised price of 60,000 US dollars and an inquiry option for prospective buyers. DYNA Robotics is a US manufacturer targeting commercial service settings, including hotels, restaurants and warehouses. Taku’s broader significance lies in its combination of a wheeled platform, articulated upper body and integrated AI control for practical work. Its current assessment remains developmental, so the distinction between demonstrated activities and broader commercial ambition matters. For organizations evaluating deployment, sorting goods, dishwasher loading and unloading, and clothes folding provide concrete starting points for matching the robot to existing workflows. The emphasis is on repeatable physical tasks rather than general purpose human replacement.
