Next Generation ASIMO Robot Advanced Humanoid from Honda

ASIMO The Future Robotic Technology

Everyone knows about ASIMO. He’s Honda Robotic’s adorable bipedal robot that can balance all by himself. What you probably didn’t realise is that the ASIMO we’ve all come to love isn’t the first of his kind. In fact he’s closer to number 100 of his kind.
The first of Honda’s robots, EO, was produced in 1986 and now twenty-five years on Honda are unveiling their latest and potentially greatest creation. This one has something quite special over its predecessors too – it can act autonomously!
Weighing in at 106 pounds, the new ASIMO is almost a stone lighter than Honda’s last incarnation. The new model is capable of 57 degrees of freedom, which is almost twice as many as its previous 34 degrees and it’s faster too, with the ability to run at 5.6mph instead of 3.7mph.
Packed full of sensors that emulate human senses like sight, hearing and touch, this new ASIMO is aware of its surroundings; so much so that it can change its behaviour and react organically to events that unfold in front of its robotic eyes.
ASIMO can even anticipate the actions of those around it, and has the ability to change its route if it anticipates someone getting in its way.
This is cool, but is nothing compared to its ability to connect faces with voices and pick them out of a noisy crowd. It’s handy too, and can unscrew bottle-tops, pour drinks and even communicate via sign-language.
This new ASIMO is leagues ahead of its predecessor, indicating a bright future ahead for autonomous robots.
It would be interesting to see a version of ASIMO using the Mask-bot human face which we covered a few days ago. The projector system would need to be a little more compact. support by V-Soft System

Robotic Super model with no tantrums to hit the ramp at Tokyo Fashion Week

HRP-4C Model Robot

It really does seem that the future belongs to robots. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has created the HRP-4C model robot. And by this we mean a runway model robot. Can you imagine the legs on a robot like this? They might be plastic and hot, but needed quite a lot of effort. It seems that it’s hard to even keep robots thin, so imagine the agony us humans go through. The robot weighs 95lb and apparently this is barely just average. This must mean I’m a giant then. One thing they’ve gotten wrong is the expression, it’s a constant look of surprise which doesn’t go with the model image. Each HRP-4C costs about $200,000 which is quite a sum. You can catch this ‘hottie’ making a debut at the Tokyo Fashion Week. Super model robots are here. What’s next?
support by V-Soft System

Maker Of NAO Robots Releases Mashed-Up Video Highlighting Our Robot Future

ASIMO After our recent Avatar post, we’ve got another loaded “future” scoop  for you. Aldebaran Robotics, maker of the NAO robot, has released a recruiting video seeking “Europe’s best engineering talents” to help it build the next phase of the NAO dream team. The video titled “Shape the World” mashes up clips from movies (I Robot, Wall-E, Star Wars), commericals (Audi, Nike, Philips, Saturn) and even a video from Björk to profile the coolness of the robot world.

With phrases in the video like “Robots are the future” and “Join us shape the world”, Aldebaran makes it clear that the world of NAO is thriving.

At its website ShapeTheWorld.fr, the company posted information about nearly 30 positions it’s seeking to fill, adding to its current staff of over 150. Back in April at the inaugural NAO Spring Dev Days conference in Paris, developers showed off how they were using NAO Next Gen bots to transcribe human speech, mimic humans via a Kinect, and serve as fitness trainers. These projects, however, seem to be scratching the surface of what next generation NAOs can do, so it is encouraging to see that the company is hiring extensively for its next phase of growth. Odds are we’ll be seeing more than just dances coming from these bots.V-Soft System