"Asimo" was presented to the public on Tuesday. Honda engineers have been working on Asimo for nearly two decades. It began as an experiment to develop a robot which could simulate the way a human being walks including climbing stairs. Body and arms were added next, to improve balance as well as functionality. Today Asimo can run, walk on uneven surfaces and, most important of all, reach for and grasp objects.

Asimo's primitive ancestor in the Honda laboratories was nearly two meters tall and weighed over 140 kilos. Today's Asimo is no more than one meter thirty, which gives it the endearing look of a bubble-headed space ragazzo jogging around the place in that curious, stalking crouch at the impressive speed of nine kilometers an hour. And its movements are smooth, not jerky.

Asimo learnt early on how to comprehend and respond to simple voice commands and also how to recognize the face of select individuals. Its camera eyes can map the enviroment and register stationary objects. It can also get out of the way of moving objects. The new Asimo can even do sign language with its improved hands. Despite all this, it has never really been able to prove that it is anything more than a cute and glorified toy for Honda's showcase.

Higher tasks

That might be about to change. On Tuesday, Honda President Takanobu Iko told reporters at the Wako research facility near Tokyo that Asimo's new robotic arm had been developed within just six months with the specific aim of making it possible to deploy the robot within the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The mechanical arm could be used to open and close valves, for example.

Asimo's aims were far more modest at the outset: to encourage young people to study the sciences; to assist the elderly or the sick confined to their beds or their wheelchairs; even to take over tasks hazardous for human beings, such as fire-fighting or cleaning up toxic spills. Meanwhile, in exactly those twenty-odd years during which Asimo went through a transition from a pair of mechanical legs without a torso to a 'thinking', humanoid robot, the world was going from Chernobyl to Fukushima and Asimo was being called to carry out higher, patriotic tasks.

A helping hand

It would perhaps be a mistake to see modern robotics as the realisation of the old dream of creating a humanoid robot resembling a human being in appearance, shape and size. A day before Honda made its latest Asimo presentation, Cyberdyne, a Tokyo-based company, unveiled the Hybrid Assistive Limb or HAL, which can be worn under a 60-kilo anti-radiation tungsten suit by the nuclear clean-up crew in the contaminated zones of Fukushima. The lightweight Tyvek HAL robot suit supports the weight of tungsten-made protective clothing by anticipating and supporting the user's body movements. Its sensors monitor the electric signals sent by the brain to the muscles and react accordingly.

Author: Arun Chowdhury (AP, AFP)
Editor: Grahame Lucas