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Honda Updates ASIMO

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:55 PM
from the finally-chasing-speed dept.
Robotics Science
kosmicki writes "Honda Motor Co. today announced the development of new technologies for the next-generation ASIMO humanoid robot, targeting a new level of mobility that will better enable ASIMO to function and interact with people by quickly processing information and acting more nimbly in real-world environments."
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  • Homework? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tyman (831421) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @10:59PM (#11100469) Homepage
    Can it to my homework and clean my room for me yet?

    • Re:Homework? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Soko (17987) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:17PM (#11100591) Homepage
      Can it to my homework and clean my room for me yet?

      Sigh.

      I sincerely hope that the new ASIMO also includes a "Smack in the back of the head for being a dumbass" spell checker and a "Put a whuppin' on this kids sorry, lazy ass" module as well.

      Soko
    • Homework? Bah! I'm waiting for the firmware hack that lets me send it to assassinate my enimies.

      That, or the fellatio adapter.

      C'mon, you know you were thinking it. That's why God invented midget hookers!
  • sensors in the wrists to give people objects seems a bit like cheeting.

    if they want to make it seem more 'human' then get it to track the person it's interacting withs face with its head. that would up the realism heaps.

  • I could use these too... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cmeans (81143) * <cmeans&intfar,com> on Wednesday December 15 2004, @10:59PM (#11100479) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    Key technologies include:
    1) "Posture Control" technology* making it possible to run in a natural human-like way
    2) "Autonomous Continuous Movement" technology enabling flexible route to destination
    3) Enhanced visual and force sensor technologies enabling smoother interaction with people

    These are all things I need too...maybe I can get an upgrade.

  • Time for a Butlerian Jihad (Score:3, Funny)

    by michaeldot (751590) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @10:59PM (#11100480)
    I don't know about you, but I for one do NOT welcome our humanoid robotic 3 kph overlords.

    • Re:Time for a Butlerian Jihad (Score:4, Funny)

      by UniverseIsADoughnut (170909) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:11PM (#11100543)
      I'm waiting for the first ASIMO to get on one of those Toyota Walker things from a few weeks ago. Robot riding a robot while killing us all, and with a Hello Kitty theme to the horror.

    • Butlers have a big advantage over robots. When you send them out on an errand, they don't typically get kidnapped and sold to pawn stores.

      Personally I'm waiting until robots start defending themselves against this sort of thing. Otherwise there's no point sending one on an errand, which I would have expected to be a primary use case (other than cleaning the house, which these things are also incapable of.)

  • Anyone... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JavaMoose (832619) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:00PM (#11100484)
    Anyone in the Robotics/Automation industry, I have a question.

    Does the ASIMO actually advance the field of robotics? Does it come out with revolutionary advances, or just build on those of others?

    I don't mean to take anything away from the ASIMO, it's pretty slick, but is it a beacon or a distraction for "real" robotics?

    • It looks almost like you are saying ASIMO is not a true innovation. And that you are trying to say ASIMO is just a packaging of existing innovations.

    • It's certainly an impressive piece of technology, but it's definitely not the pinnaclce of robotics. It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form, and if there's anything I've learned from 1950's sci-fi, it's that everyone wants their own little robot butler.

      ASIMO is, at most, a PR move. "Look! We can build an incredible robot! Imagine how great our automobiles must be!"

      • Re:Anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dubious9 (580994) * on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:51PM (#11100803) Journal
        It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form

        As I replied below [slashdot.org], replicating human form and movement is a tremendously difficult engineering task. A PR move? I don't think so. I believe I've heard that honda is planning to move human-like robots into their factories to revolutionize efficiency. General purpose robots that can move like humans and react intellegently to narrow tasks could drive down manufacturing costs through the floor.

        Plus they are doing world-leading research on the advancement of human-like movement. Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, but they've put little advertizing dollars into it for it to be a PR move. However, they've spent billions developing it. They sure expect that investment to pay off down the line. I'm not sure I blame them.
    • I think Honda and the Japanese in general are making great strides with robotics.

      ASIMO in particular may be more of a way to show off than the breeding itself, but I don't think this is just a case of Honda stealing everyone elses tech and packaging it.

      If any other single entity was capable of making a robot as polished as ASIMO we'd be seeing it. And we're not.

      • Err, make that "than the breeding ground itself"...

      • I'm not sure about the answer to your question, but I would say even if it is putting lots of technologies together, its still difficult to do. I"m sure its as hard as getting all the parts of a complex computer program to work together when they were developed separately. Look at all the problems we see with OS's when soemthing new is added.

        But from what I have read, it seems a lot of hte advances are home grown for ASIMO.

    • Re:Anyone... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:22PM (#11100622)
      I'm someone in the robotics field, and yes it does, the same way everything in all research fields improves: gradually.

      ASIMO provides a solid platform for researching humanoid motion control, mechanisms for humanoid robots, human-robot interaction, and robot-environment interaction. The researchers who work on it make advances in all these areas, just like the researchers who work on the Qrio, or any other robotic platform make advances in their areas.

      Being a handy marketing tool is merely a side benefit of developing all these technologies that will be extremely useful in the future when Honda wants to be a big player in the robotics industry. It's called "thinking longterm."
    • As I gathered from a discovery channel program about robots, ASIMO is revolutionary in it's advanced bipedal movement. Walking on two legs [wikipedia.org] is an extremely difficult problem to engineer, and it took Honda billions of dollars to develop a robot that could do it.

      It might not have been the first, but it sure is state of the art, and helps in advancing human-like automotons. IIRC it was the first robot that could walk like a human and climb stairs, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Therefore, as far a
    • Here's some related research papers:

      http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=asimo [google.com]

  • Still with the helmet? (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheShadowHawk (789754) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:01PM (#11100490) Homepage
    Looks like they are slowly getting better..

    Should be interesting once the robots start looking like Robin Williams [imdb.com] or (gasp!) Haley Joel Osment [imdb.com].

    Hmm..

  • Videos (Score:5, Informative)

    by r_glen (679664) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:01PM (#11100493)
    You can see videos of Asimo in action (including his new "tricks") at the Honda [honda.com] site.
    • videos of Asimo

      You deserve your +5 informative, but you could have warned us that they were streams. I started about 6 of 'em in tabs before I realised what I had done.

      And off course, everytime the robot starts doing something interresting the video stream craps out for 2 seconds. It sure SOUNDS like he's doing something neat.

      Man I hate streaming, why do people do this? Hate, is it hate of mankind? Some kind of irrational need to let people know there's something cool to see, but not actually letting th
  • Please correct me if I am wrong, but...

    I was under the impression that Asimo is remote-controlled. I suppose it is a pretty slick remote-controlled toy, but I think a large part of the Asimo scheme is just conning the world into believing they have something really amazing: AI that advanced.

    • The videos suggest that it is autonomous, as in one of them it doesn't respond the first time, and sometimes it seems a bit sluggish in comprehending.

      If they were faking it, I feel they would do a better job.

    • I saw ASIMO "in person": it's semi-autonomous (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nomihn0 (739701) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:36PM (#11100699)
      The routine was preprogrammed and triggered remotely from backstage over a broadband wireless connection. Everything was scripted - the floor was plastered in tape to help the human actors perform correctly. A few of the markers were triggers for ASIMO to orient itself with before demonstrating an action. It was explained to the crowd that some half-dozen technicians were working backstage, keeping the thing going the whole time.

      Now, many of the feats (climbing stairs, walking across a see saw, walking in circles, bracing for a fall) were calculated on the fly by ASIMO. You have to give Honda credit for succeeding in that, but overall ASIMO is just an overblown animatronic puppet.

      At least half a year ago, I saw a video of ASIMO jogging. Although the jogging was a joke as a mode of locomotion, it was an interesting demonstration of balance. My question is, how much has ASIMO changed since then? The video of the new ASIMO running looks suspiciously similar to the old one. I have the feeling that this "next-generation" ASIMO is far more capable than these new video demonstrations convey.
      • Asimo is semi-autonimous, but not because it's got an _optional_ remote control. Asimo has to be 'ordered' or 'programmed' to perform tasks, like any robot butler would... it's not an 'artifical thinking machine' if you tell it to 'go wash the car' it can only perform that taks if it understands what you mean by 'car' where the car 'is' and what you mean by 'wash' They could easily program asimo to work on purely voice commands or hand gestures, but the remote control is for convenience and to make the
    • Asimo's been in the works for a while. It's been autonomous since the P3 (not pentium) in 1993.

      Check out their history [honda.com].
  • where and how do I get one?
  • I've got a dishwasher. Maybe it's old or something but it really doesn't get the dishes 50% as clean as when I do the washing up myself (and my g/f says I don't do it 25% as well as she does).. but we still use it, cause if you've got a dishwasher who wants to do dishes? Now stacking the dishwasher, that's a freakin' chore. You can't just put the dishes into the dishwasher as you make them either, cause you're only ever get four or five dishes into there before you run out of space. It's a bin packing p

  • Honda vs Sony (Score:3, Informative)

    by IANAAC (692242) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:13PM (#11100561)
    I recently saw a demo of Sony's Qrio dream robot. I haven't seen Honda's demo, other than the videos on their web page, but Sony's seems to be a bit more intuitive with movements and interaction, particularly head movement. And it jumps and throws too.

    Overall, it just seems a bit smoother.

    • Qrio is just a step up from Aibo, though...I've actually worked with AIBO (development for my senior yr CS project - all the APIs are written in C++!). It was pretty decent. I think Sony and Honda are approaching the issue from different angles though - if you check out Honda's site, you'll see that they've been working on 'walking' bots for while now, where as Sony kind of started out with other stuff..

  • nice and smooth! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mm0mm (687212) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:14PM (#11100565)
    movement of new asimo looks very fluid. check out him running [honda.com] and chasing a Japanese chick [honda.com]. it is incredible. this made me wonder if someone would begin using robots in the medical field in the next decade or so.

    • Re:nice and smooth! (Score:5, Funny)

      by michaeldot (751590) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:30PM (#11100670)

      movement of new asimo looks very fluid ... chasing a Japanese chick

      Oh dear, so it's come to this. Geeks don't even bother chasing girls themselves, they program their robots to do it.

  • ASIMO (Score:2, Interesting)

    by F13 (9091)
    in case anyone was wondering is, Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility
    see here [acronymfinder.com] although It may just be a name now.

    There is also a time line for ASIMO at Honda.co.jp(japanese) but you can see a graphical history of it here [honda.co.jp]

  • Government sponsered, privately built (Score:4, Informative)

    by Scrameustache (459504) on Wednesday December 15 2004, @11:19PM (#11100603) Homepage Journal
    Japan has a government sponsored humanoid robot devellopment project. And it seems that rivalry between the major corporation also fuels the R&D.

    Honda's Asimo is the best of the bunch, but Sony has a doll sized little "entertainment" robot, and Toyota has a trumpet playing robot, not to mention all the universities working on various robotic sub-projects, like facial expression and whatnot (I thought disney's animatronics had the expressiveness thing figured out, maybe my memory has embelished them somewhat).

    Asimov expected the U.S. to be the leader in humanoid robots, he couldn't have foreseen this shift in technological leadership, but at least Honda named their creation after him : )

      • Re:Government sponsered, privately built (Score:4, Informative)

        by Scrameustache (459504) on Thursday December 16 2004, @12:28AM (#11101005) Homepage Journal
        He isn't named after Asimov. The name ASIMO is japanese; it means something like "with legs".

        There's a japanese leg pun in there too, but it is named after Asimov.

        From Wikipedia:
        The robot's name is a backronym in honor of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, maker of the Three Laws of Robotics. Officially, the name stands for "Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility". In Japanese, the name is pronounced ashimo and, not coincidentally, means "legs also".
  • What I want to know is how it compares to the A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 4000 robot? [tvtome.com] For example, how many Adam Sandler movies can it conceive?

    For those unfamiler with the A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 4000, a picture of it undergoing stress testing by the U.S. military can be found here [southparkstudios.com].

  • Episode 804
    Butters: Woah what a Huge package!
    Butters: Ko-ni-chi-wa
    Butters: To Butters Stotch! Oh boy it's for me-it's for me!
    Butters: Who is it from? Sent from japan. WOW! A Package for me FROM JAPAN!
    Butters: What could it be? My birthday's not till September Eleventh!
    Butters: Oh boy, I've never had a package this big!
    Butters: I've always wanted to have a huge package!
    *SLAM*
    *Robot Noises+Blinky Lights*
    Cartman: Greetings. I am the awesomo 4000.
    --Highpoints:
    Carman: LAME!
    --
    Carman: Weak.
    --
    Carman: LAME!

    Kar

  • I think what most slashdotters want to know is (Score:3, Funny)

    by xRelisH (647464) on Thursday December 16 2004, @12:35AM (#11101049)
    when there will be a "female" version, and what new "tricks" it will be able to do.
    • You see, the idea is to make robots better drivers than we are. Then, when you buy your new Accord, for a "small" upgrade, you'll get a chauffeur!
    • well, a trading card company became the leader in video games(Nintendo). Every company evolves by what it sees open to it. They both are kind of surprising, but I am sure there are loads more examples.
      • And Xerox made the Laser printer, GUI, and computer mouse...

        Maybe that's the difference between Japanese and American companies... American companies give up and stick to photocopiers.

    • Re:Honda? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by linoleo (718385)
      And what makes you think ASIMO represents "world leadership" in humanoid robotics?

      From a scientific point of view, ASIMO is an expensive glitzy remote-controlled toy that doesn't tell us much at all about humanoid (as in fluent and efficient) sensorimotor coordination. Take humanoid locomotion: it's based on coupled oscillator dynamics, and letting the physics of the body do much of the work for you. ASIMO doesn't do that at all.

      For an example of real "world leadership" in robot (in this case: quadruped)
    • Honda is a very forward thinking company though. They used to only make mopeds, now they make cars and trucks. They even have jets [honda.com] in the works.
    • Are we one step closer to having Mechs' ala MechWarrior?

      No, but between ASIMO's upgrades and these robots [wired.com] that can power themselves by "eating" organic material, we're two steps closer to having the Matrix-- or would that be, two steps closer to the Matrix having us?

      ~Philly
    • If a robot can use any implements made for humans, then
      the system is a lot more robust:
      • It can use any tools a human can use. Saving on development of robo centric tools.
      • If the gizmo fails, a human can be temporarily substituted to do the job.
      • One reason they are looking at this is to automate caregiving in old age homes (Japanese are getting older) Need a robot that can make the bed, clean the floors, perhaps help granny get out of her chair. If you are going to get picked up by a robot, my guess is

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