ASIMO Humanoid Receives Honor as World’s Most Advanced Humanoid Robot

Honda’s ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) humanoid robot has set a new world record and has been honored as the World’s Most Advanced Humanoid Robot.

The ASIMO humanoid is part of Honda’s R&D initiatives in robotics and human mobility fields. The robot was developed at Honda's R&D Wako Fundamental Technical Research Center before ten years.

All joints of ASIMO include 34° of Freedom, enabling the robot to effectively respond to the natural human motions. It can identify various objects as well as the landscape of its environment. It can understand easy verbal instructions, identify faces and evades mobile obstacles as it moves.

The company launched several applications in the iphone and smartphone (A ‘Run with Asimo’) enabling users to communicate with a virtual ASIMO robot on their mobile.

The Honda engineers worked for ten years to develop the latest version. The robot can now walk and run on all irregular surfaces. It can even climb staircases and stretch to grab objects.

The ultimate mission of Honda’ robotics department is to enable ASIMO to help humans for performing their daily tasks and to carry out risky operations.

Source;
http://www.azorobotics.com/details.asp?newsID=902

Honda makes short film on robots

I will use any excuse to post this picture....
Instead of cranking out a few more commercials, Honda is taking a different approach. It's making short films about some pretty interesting, and varied, topics.

The one about robots is especially well done. It's basic message: Robots are here to help us, says the company that brought you Asimo, pictured above. We have nothing to fear. There. If robots take over the world, blame Honda.

The goal of the films, a far longer format than any ad, was "telling the story we are already telling within the walls of Honda," said Barbara Ponce, Honda's U.S. ad chief. Doing it through short films works because "there wasn't enough time to tell the story and it wasn't breaking through in the 30-second spots."

Source;
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/11/honda-makes-short-film-on-robots/1