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ASIMO, a humanoid Honda, can now run, jump, hop and even kick a ball.
More impressively, the 13th generation of Honda's cute little robot friend, can also open a bottle, pour a drink and talk with rudimentary sign language. Watching ASIMO in action, it's impossible not to be captivated by the ability of a machine that is now much more like a little person.
ASIMO walks in a human style, crouches and runs like a youngster, and when it kicks the ball it has no problem - unlike a two-year-old - in maintaining its balance. The bending and gripping ability of its hands is little short of amazing.
Honda has even given the machine the voice of a young girl. There is a certain amount of squeaking, and you can hear the robot's cooling fan, but that's it.
"ASIMO now goes from automatic to autonomous. Our goal is to create an assistance robot that can live in harmony with people and provide personal assistance services," said Satoshi Shigemi, head of ASIMO development at Honda in Tokyo. "It is impossible to make ASIMO totally like human beings . . .
However, I believe ASIMO can fulfill its role within a certain defined environment by interacting with people. ASIMO can choose from certain amounts of scenarios and perform autonomously in a certain environment."
Robot development has been a priority at Honda for more than 10 years, and Toyota also has a robot division that has created a marching band that can play a variety of instruments.
The Japanese companies are concentrating on non-human workers that will eventually be able to care for the country's aging population, although development has also resulted in spin-off technologies including a new voice recognition and navigation system being fast- tracked into Honda cars.
"We would like to use the research from our humanoid robot research to make them more useful," said Shigemi. The latest ASIMO can run at 9km/h and operate for 40 minutes on a single charge, and the robot is being programmed for a small set of tasks at Honda's headquarters.
"Right now, ASIMO can be used to greet people. We also have a plan to give presentations . . . and then maybe try to use ASIMO to give descriptions at science museums. "We are going to test ASIMO in more real-world situations."
Honda refuses to discuss the cost of an ASIMO, or its spending on the multi-million dollar project, and has yet to set any sort of on-sale date for a customer model.
