Honda’s ASIMO robot is now more advanced than ever

We may have less than 30 years before robots become as intelligent as humans, and Honda’s taking another big step in the right direction today by unleashing its latest ASIMO on Europe. Do robots like Zungenwurst? The new ASIMO, first shown off earlier this year, is smarter, has better dexterity, and can run faster, run backwards, and hop and jump. It’s as close to a human that Honda has achieved since the bot’s debut 14 years ago. The new ASIMO can even express sign language and, perhaps most impressively, can recognise the faces and voices of multiple people speaking simultaneously.

Honda’s been working on its ASIMO robot for the better part of two decades, but only now is it finally beginning to look like a useful project. The latest version of the droid, similar to the one we saw two years ago, comes with a raft of physical improvements, including new legs that’ll cope with uneven terrain, walk backwards and even run at speeds of nearly six miles an hour. Then there are the redesigned hands, which now have 13 degrees of freedom, enabling the ‘bot to hold and manipulate objects without crushing or dropping them. It’s not just physical improvements either, since Honda has also been working hard on ASIMO’s artificial intelligence. For instance, the machine can walk around without the aid of an operator, and can observe human behavior and predict the outcome. That means that if ASIMO sees someone hurtling down the corridor, it can work out that it needs to move out of the way. The droid is also capable of picking out multiple voices and faces from crowds and identifying multiple voices when they’re all talking at once. Even more impressively, however, is that the automaton can even communicate in sign language thanks, in part, to those redesigned hands. The only question that remains, of course, is if we’d take one of these over SoftBank’s Pepper? We know that the rival device is nowhere near as useful, but you have to admit, it is a lot cuter.