In 1976, Prof. Yutaka Kanayama (currently a Professor at Naval Postgraduate School, USA) started a project to develop mobile robots with Dr. Jun'ichi Iijima, Research associate at Department of Computer Science in Electro Communication University. In 1977, Prof.
Kanayama moved to Institute of Electronics and Information Science in University of Tsukuba, and the project had been named the "YAMABICO project".In 1978, Dr. Shin'ich Yuta, Lecturer (currently Professor at University of Tsukuba) joined this project.
After Prof. Kanayama had gone to USA in 1984, Prof. Yuta inherited this project. In 1992, Dr. Akihisa Ohya, research associate (currently Associate Professor) joined the project. Also in 1994, Dr. Takashi Tsubouchi, Lecturer (who got Ph. D degree in this laboratory in 1988, currently Associate Professor) joined the project, from which currently we have three permanent Professors.