All-new Asimo Robot from Honda

Honda has today unveiled an all-new ASIMO humanoid robot in Tokyo equipped with world's first autonomous behavior control technology which helps it to continue moving without being controlled by an operator.

ASIMO is now having the capability to sense the movement of people around it and respond according to that. For example, it can predict the direction in which a person will walk the next moment and can avoid collision by choosing an alternate path to walk. ASIMO is now capable to walk, run, run backward, hop on one leg or on two legs continuously. Honda has given ASIMO a multi-fingered high functional hand equipped with tactile and force sensors in each finger, thereby helping it to perform tasks such as picking up a glass bottle, twisting off its cap, holding a soft paper cup to pour a liquid without squishing it, perform sign languages, etc.

 

 

The all-new ASIMO is now advanced from an “automatic machine” to an “autonomous machine” with the decision-making capability to determine its behavior in concert with its surroundings such as movements of people. At the beginning of the development process, the following three factors were identified as necessary for a robot to perform as an autonomous machine, and the technologies required to realize these capabilities were developed.
1) high-level postural balancing capability which enables the robot to maintain its posture by putting out its leg in an instant.
2) external recognition capability which enables the robot to integrate information, such as movements of people around it, from multiple sensors and estimate the changes that are taking place.
3) the capability to generate autonomous behavior which enables the robot to make predictions from gathered information and autonomously determine the next behavior without being controlled by an operator. With these capabilities, the all-new ASIMO takes another step closer to practical use in an environment where it coexists with people.

Key specifications

Height	130cm
Weight	48kg (decreased 6kg from previous model)
Operating degrees of freedom	Total: 57 degrees of freedom (increase of 23 degrees of freedom from previous model)
Running speed	9km/hour (previous model: 6km/hour)

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