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Buried in the far corner of one of the myriad halls of CES, Honda Motor Company demonstrated the latest features of their ASIMO humanoid robot. Honda has been a leader in the development of humanoid robotics for years, and this latest version of ASIMO demonstrated two new features never before demonstrated in the United States: balancing on a tilting floor and navigating a steep slope in both directions. This Las Vegas appearance was preceded by news of yet another ASIMO variant in Japan that can carry objects in cart and run at a brisk 4 mph. While your average human toddler can manage these tasks pretty easily — and chuck soggy cheerios at the family pet at the same time — the engineering, physics and programming required to make this happen (aside from the flinging food bit) in a humanoid robot is pretty remarkable. While we still may be a few years away from George Jetson’s Rosie-bot washing our delicates and baking gingersnaps for the young ‘uns, odds are good that some of the robots doing so may be sporting a Honda logo. We tried to snag a swell ASIMO plush toy at a post-demo raffle, but our swag-winnning mojo was nowhere to be seen. For more on all things ASIMO visit http://asimo.honda.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under General robotics news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.