A look at Honda's Asimo @ TechTakeaway.com

Honda believe that by trying to create a robot that emulates human actions, the general public will relate to it more readily. This certainly seems to be the case, people generally love Asimo. Asimo and similar looking robots, like the Plen desktop robot from Japan, are more likely to be called cute than scary. Although maybe Asimo's 5-year old child voice is a little bit creepy! I think it might be better if it didn't talk so much, it's actions speak louder than words.

Asimo has been in development for a long time, Honda have been experimenting with humanoid robots since the 1980's and Asimo was launched in the year 2000. Since then Asimo has been modified to better achieve challenges like stairs, it can now climb and descend stairs confidently, also run at 6 kilometres per hour, serve drinks to people, and dance in a very fluid although pre-programmed way.

In-Depth:
Honda's Asimo robot

With the drink serving and trolley pushing that Asimo often goes in for, it seems like Honda want to make robots to serve humans. There are already a number of cleaning vacuum robots on the market like the UBOT-Navigation, and there is a large market for high-price restaurants, hotels & other businesses that could employ a number of robots to clean and serve the guests. It would certainly give them an edge and a great selling point which would attract loads of business as people would want to come and see the robots at work.

Hollywood movies & television has repeatly told us that having subservient robots would eventually lead to them turning against humans and trying to kill us all, but I don't think Asimo is capable of that yet.

Related: In-Depth - Honda's Asimo robot >>

To find out more visit: http://asimo.honda.com/

A look at Honda's Asimo

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