P3 and ASIMO - The Honda Humanoid Robots

Carnegie Mellon researchers have taught ASIMO to walk through ‘frogger’-like moving obstacles and among spinning blades of doom ala Indiana Jones.

The approach anthropomorphic robots experiencing a renewed interest in robotics intervention and service as bipeds robots can travel without special adaptation to a human environment. The robot Bip 2000, which will be presented at the Universal Exhibition in Hanover from May to September 2000, must be able to walk so anthropomorphic in the absence of barriers on a horizontal or slanted and ascend or descend stairs. Why a biped robot? The walking robots have compared to their counterparts wheeled several advantages: crossing barriers very easy way to lower ground, better adaptability. If robots multimode can cover large areas of non-manufacturing robotic exploration, maintenance, intervention, they are not suitable to the accompaniment of man in his personal or professional activities. That is why the world community of walking robots now devotes much of its research to so-called humanoid systems. The walking robot android P3 Honda is a realization of exceptional quality, but the laws of command are relatively simple. Read more »

Wowee unveiled its new WiFi webcam robot, which can be remotely using any device with Internet access: mobile phone, PC or video game console. Users can see what happens at home or at work through the camera integrated Rovio that stream video and audio transmitted by the robot. Including the intelligent navigation and positioning system North Star , Rovio moves alone with precision and can avoid obstacles on its way. We hope to see a live demonstration at CES. Read more »

This paper presents a control law for the tracking of a cyclic reference trajectory by an under actuated biped robot. The robot studied is a five-link planar robot. The degree of under actuation is one during the single support phase. The control law is defined in such a way that only the geometric evolution of the robot is controlled, not the temporal evolution. To achieve this objective, we consider a time-scaling control. For a given reference path, the temporal evolution during the geometric tracking is completely defined and can be analyzed through the study of the dynamic model. Read more »

In 2000, based on experience with P3, Honda presented Asimo (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility), a robot exhibition represents the culmination of 14 years of research. It was designed under the direction of the engineer Masato Hirose. This small autonomous android measure 1.20 meters and weighs 53 kg. It moves at 1.6 km / h but it is capable of running a moderate pace (12 kph), skipping, dancer and ascend or descend stairs. Admittedly, sometimes it even rate a march through the public representation, but we do so, the difference qu’Asimo can not even stand up alone.
But although it is a robot, and see the warning, showing signs of intelligence and then dropped onto a trap and be unable to recover any revealed the impotence of men to inject life and reflexes fundamentals. At the same time fascinating and pathetic, he fell on the stairs revealed how much was still a long way towards creating a completely autonomous android. Read more »