Honda ASIMO

ASIMO (アシモ) is a humanoid robot created by Honda Motor Company. Standing at 130 centimeters (4 feet 3 inches) and weighing 52 kilograms (119 lbs.), the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack and can walk on two feet at speeds up to 6 km/h (3.7 mph). ASIMO was created at Honda's Research & Development Wako Fundamental Technical Research Center in Japan. It is the current model in a line of eleven that began in 1986 with E0.

Officially, the name is an acronym for "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility". ASIMO is designed to operate in the real world, where people need to reach for things, pick things up, navigate along floors, sidewalks, and even climb stairs. ASIMO's abilities to run, walk smoothly, climb stairs, communicate, and recognize people's voices and faces will enable ASIMO to easily function in our world and truly assist humans.

ASIMO serves as a sort of Apollo mission for Honda, a long running research project that's slowly rooting out all the technical issues of delivering a truly humanoid autonomous robot to market.

Posture Control, Autonomous Continuous Movement and "enhanced visual and force sensor technologies" lead the list of improvements. ASIMO has also grown a bit, with an extra 10cm in height and 2kg in weight ASIMO also has a much longer battery life: 1 hour, up from the 30 minutes of the previous model.

ASIMO is also quite a bit faster: Posture Control gives ASIMO the ability to run. With Posture Control ASIMO can bend and twist its body to maintain balance, keep its feet from slipping and not spin while in air. According to Honda, ASIMO can now run at 3km/hour, and now walks at 2.5km/hour, up from 1.6km/hour.

Autonomous Continuous Movement means that ASIMO can choose its own path to a destination should the area around it deviate from its internal map. In other words, if the cat is sleeping in a doorway, ASIMO can now move around it. ASIMO is using floor surface and visual sensors to detect obstacles, and Honda's keen on the idea that ASIMO doesn't have to stop to maneuver.

The visual sensors in the head are joined by force sensors in ASIMO's wrists. The kinesthetic sensors mean that ASIMO can now natively interract with a person that's handing it an object, shaking ASIMO's hand. ASIMO can also now step backwards or forwards when its hand is pulled or pushed.

The latest ASIMO also features a host of new joints that offer it more flexibility and "expression" according to Honda.