Then, he worked at Komatsu Manufacturing, because, he said, he liked excavators. But in 1974, he saw that Tomy was hiring, and wanted to make toys. “They told me that it was the toy company number 1 in Japan, so I decided [it was worth a look]”, Said.” I took a night train from Tohoku to Tokyo to take a work exam, and that’s how I ended up joining the company. “
The inspiration for the Armatron came from a newspaper cut that the Watanabe chief brought him one day. “Showed an image of a [mechanical arm] holding an egg with three fingers. I think we begin to think: “This is where things go these days, so we do this,” he recalled.
As the protagonist of a small team, Watanabe briefly directed his attention to another project, and by the time he returned to the robotic arm, the team had a prototype. But it was quite different from the final form of Armatron. “The hand extended from the main body to the side and could only move about 90 degrees. The control panel also had six movement positions, and they changed with six switches. I personally did not like it,” Watanabe said. Then he returned to work.
Courtesy of Takara Tomy
Watanabe’s advance was inspired by radio -controlled helicopters that operated as a hobby. Holding a radio remote control with dual joystick controls, he said: “This stick operation allows you to perform four movements with two arms, but I thought that if you turn this part, you can use six movements.”
Courtesy of Hiroyuki Watanabe
“I had always wanted to create a system that could rotate 360 degrees, so I thought about how to make that system work,” he added.
