ASIMO 2011

On November 8th, 2011, Honda unveiled what would become the last major update to Asimo. Asimo(2011) has an increased max running speed of 9 km/h due to strengthened legs, expanded range of movement, and new control technology. The other major innovation of Asimo(2011) is the new hands that have 13 DoF each. This was accomplished by using hydraulic actuators. Each finger has a force sensor in addition to the palm force sensor. Asimo(2011)’s weight decreased to 48 kg. Asimo(2011) has the ability to recognize the voices of multiple people speaking simultaneously, and can predict the direction of person walking to avoid collision.

Dynamic Gait Transition between Walking, Running and Hopping for Push Recovery published in 2017 gave an amazing look under Asimo(2011)’s plastic shell.

E2-DR

In October 2015, Honda engineers submitted papers to the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) on what would later become the prototype E2DR disaster response robot. Early renders showed a shared design language with Asimo, but pictures from 2018 show the robot with a distinctive orange paint job.

Retirement

On June 28th 2018, NHK broke the story that Honda would stop all further development of Asimo. Honda released an official press release On July 2nd. Asimo’s last hardware revision was in 2011 and development of a new humanoid started sometime before 2015.

Variants

There are three confirmed variants of Asimo(2011): white, blue, and rangefinder testbed. The rangefinder testbed was shown breifly in the NHK documentary Inside Asimo.

Where are they now?

As of writing (4/17/2021) Asimo is still doing demos in two locations: National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation and Honda Welcome Plaza Aoyama. Demos at Honda Collection Hall in Twin Ring Motegi were halted around 2019 (need source for date)

Notes

More apperances. Talk about technology spin-off. Mention HRP-5