The New Slimmed Down Humanoid ASIMO Robot

Look at that thing move will ya! Pretty fluid for a machine eh? It is kind of humorous too, watching it scoot around like a child being funny.

Honda’s star robot has polished its act by not only improving past capabilities, but with a new intelligence capability the robot can coordinate those capabilities and adapt to changing situations. In short, Asimo has graduated from an “automatic machine” controlled by an operator to an “autonomous machine” that makes its own decisions and gets things done on its own.
Asimo was already one of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots. With its astronaut-like appearance, Asimo successfully navigated a constantly-changing “paperscape” terrain without any operator intervention. It can walk up and down stairs, push a cart to wherever you need it, even conduct a symphony orchestra. It can also recognize people’s faces and follow their postures and gestures. Asimo also showed us how good of a listener it is, capable of distinguishing a person’s voice and an odd sound such as a book falling on the floor.
Until now, all of those actions were preprogrammed or controlled by an operator, and functioned independently.

Meet the all-new Asimo.
Body…
If you’re kind enough to notice, Asimo has shed a few kilograms. At 54 kg, the new frame is 6 kg lighter than the previous one. It makes for a more dextrous robot. So does the increased strength and expanded range of its leg movements. Put these together with a new control technology, and you have a robot that can walk or run forwards and backwards and hop tirelessly on one or both legs. If it needs to, it can also make mid-motion adjustments and change feet landing positions. Its new legs now enable it to hold a stable posture while walking over an uneven surface. And what is sure to improve its game at RoboCup, Asimo’s maximum running speed has also increased to 9 km per hour.
…and Mind
With a new technology developed by Honda for advanced intelligence, Asimo can now simultaneously use visual, auditory, and tactile sensory input to assess its environment.
When it encounters a human it uses both face and voice recognition to identify who they are. When multiple people are present and vying for the all-new Asimo’s attention, its voice recognition can parse their voices and identify each one. If a person is walking, it will predict where the person will be within the next few seconds and, if it needs to, quickly change its path to avoid a collision.
Cocktail effect and clumsiness conquered. Asimo can hang out with me at a party anytime.
Speaking of which, it can grab me a beer too. And if it’s a twist-off, it can open the can for me and pour the frothy beverage into a glass for me – or even a paper cup (Honda could not be contacted for confirmation that a bottle cap-opening model is in the works). Tactile sensors on Asimo’s fingers and a force center in its palm give the hand delicate feedback that is used to control the fingers independently. These sensors are combined with object recognition to pour the contents of the bottle into the cup and not the other way around.

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Pretty cool and why are the Japanese so often first to come out with amazing tech? Voice recognition, ability to avoid running into people,better dexterity in hand, fingers and wrist, makes me wonder where this will be in 5 years.

Peace,
spec

Now to try and make it walk normally instead of being followed around by some freaky looking weirdo.
Picture Asimo in a hat and trenchcoat and you get the idea

I wonder what this guy's descendants will be like 50-100 years from now...

Awww they sooo sweet .

Can i get one for cutting the grass and cleaning the
house and other jobs i dont like.

On second thought just think of all the jobs they will
do and the humans who are not needed eek.

Still cute tho.

reply to post by FOXMULDER147


Think iRobot.
After the "ET" give us "new" technology to "improve" life, this things will be considered sentinient beings that walk amongst us.

Can wait (that is not a typing error)

reply to post by 12voltz


Now that would be funny, in a freaky kind of way! Imagine it in an ET suit running through the woods!

It walks like it needs to do a number 2 and its trying very carefully to get to the bathroom.

But for a bit under a million dollars you can have the worlds slowest bartender.

reply to post by FOXMULDER147

I wonder what this guy's descendants will be like 50-100 years from now...

reply to post by skuly

Yea but hopefully we can make good use of our new free time, and not burden our bodies as much.
I bet we will see these everywhere at some point.

Put the new Iphone inside its head for speech recognition and away we go.....

I suspect a dumb robot able to do household chores is only years away.

A thinking robot a couple of decades.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Yeah he's good at avoiding people, now all they need to do is train him to turn around and flash his middle finger and you have the perfect New Yorker.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000


If we give him(?) the bird sign, then we should give him the peace sign too, imo.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Very cool and a glimpse of the future.

But How does Honda do it ?

It's called Kaizen ....or constant process improvement.

What is truly sad is that this was created by an American by the name of W. Edwards Deming who had introduced these concepts during WWII in producing reliable war materials allowing us to be victorious over the Axis powers.

Deming went to Japan after WWII when Corporate America had sent him packing after the war was over ...in the belief that his concepts which conflicted with traditional management by objectives were no longer needed or were necessary.

And also as to why Honda provides reliable high performance V8 racing Engines to our Indy Cars...with Zero Failures IMA.

But Asimo has been around for a while and only gets better....It all boils down to how much computing power we can incorporate in a that little backpack of his/hers...

In looking at Moore's Law in that the processing power doubles every 2 years within about 5-10 years we should see these things capable of performing basic tasks around the home..

I'd buy one in a heartbeat...simply to clean up around the house ...which would be awesome !!

Peace

Kaizen (改善?), Japanese for "improvement", or "change for the better" refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, game development, and business management. It has been applied in healthcare,[1] psychotherapy,[2] life-coaching, government, banking, and other industries. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain.[3]

Read and Learn about "Kaizen"....
en.wikipedia.org...

Moore's Law
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by nh_ee

Interesting story nh_ee, thanks for the addition. On Moore's law, it seems that premise is becoming antiquated. Check this thread out: Big Data
Sky's the limit (but not Skynet!)

Peace,
spec

Nice! Way to go, Honda.
It's pretty funny too, I hope that when they improve it to HAL standards they leave that toilet-seeking way of walking, it's hilarious.
Why don't we send a couple of this boys to the moon? As long as they are properly insulated from the dust, they shouldn't have much trouble up there, if they can avoid a moving japanese lady (and even I can't predict what a japanese woman will do) they surely can avoid a freaking rock...
S&F