The Honda Asimo Robot plays Vegas

Yesterday I came across this article on Yahoo News. I attended the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Vegas every January from 1999-2003, but have not been able to get there for a couple of years. After reading this article, I wish I'd have been there this year.

Asimo Plays Vegas, Impersonates Elvis 

Christopher Null Thu Jan 5, 11:25 AM ET

Robots take one step closer to humankind. Honda’s celebrated robot ASIMO arrives on U.S. shores at CES this week, prepared to exhibit capabilities never before seen in the States. Hourly demonstrations at the Honda booth include balancing on a floor that tilts and moves, climbing stairs, and walking up and down a slope. After hours, he’ll be demonstrating techniques for replacing American workers and searching for Sarah Connor. Do you see robots entering our daily life any time soon? Let us know.

We are five years into the 21st century. Moat of us have been wondering where the real robots are hiding. We have a plethora of robots populating art, literature, and popular culture, and they have been existant for thousands of years, only recently flooding their humanoid images across our world. So far, the robots we do have in use on the planet do not seem to resemble human beings in the least. We have electronic digtally programmed "arms" that manufacture our automobiles. So I guess it would be fitting that the most "human" looking and "acting" robot is probably one no one has heard about. I know the quiet existence of the Honda "Asimo" (in honor of Issac Asimov, who wrote "I, Robot") because I stumbled across an advertisement for him. I have seen thousands of advertisements over the years for Sony's "robotic dog", Aibo. It's an "electronic best friend", sure to keep the kiddies entertained. From the early days of "electronic toys", toymakers have been coming up with digitally enhanced versions of the old Chatty Cathy doll. In the 60s, a child needed a string to pull to make Cathy "talk". By the late eighties the "Teddy Ruxpin" toy bear told stories to children (when he worked). The Aibo dog is not a toy, but it has always been marketed as one. Aibo, and more importantly, the two legged "Asimo" are programmable and "learning" representations of life. They are the first breed of "humanoid robots". The ones which have been predicted for so long.

The Honda Asimo Website is one of the most interesting sites I've visited. As soon as I read the advertisement, which showed an eerily prescient image of the little guy (The 2005 "model" Asimo is only four foot tall, like a child.) surrounded by a Rockwellish portrait, just "one of the family", I just had to see how long this thing has been in the works. It is almost as if the company has been keeping "wraps" on the little guy until he was "perfect".(Or else perhaps they hadn't worked all the "bugs" out of him, and only recently got him to behave, in a plot that certainly would mirror a lot of the ones about "rampaging robots.")

Honda already manufactures motorcycles, automobiles,( including the hybrid "Insight"), all terrain vehicles, and lawn maintenance products. The company was founded by Soichiro Honda, who was born on November 17, 1906, in Komyo Village (now Tenryu City), Japan. The young Honda dropped out of elementary school and got a job as a repair mechanic for the new automotive industry in 1922. Prior to World War II, Honda dreamed of spinning off a new car company off from the car manufacturing company for which he worked. The Art Shokai company was involved in racing motorcycles. After the war, in 1946, Honda began his own company. The first Honda product was a modified motor driven bicycle using surplus auxiliary motors.

By the 60s, Honda was selling not only motorcycles to the American public, but inexpensive automobiles as well. The first Honda "Civic" debuted in 1972, and is widely credited for beginning the long process of dismantling the superiority and eventually the reputation of the "big three" American car makers, as thousands of Americans fell head over heels for the miniature automobile that got over 40 miles to the gallon in the middle of the nation's first large "oil shortage," which caused gas prices to soar, when gas was available.

Honda branched out, and today their product mix is well known and repected in every corner of the world.

In 1986, Honda really started branching out, and began examining the principles of two legged locomotion. The prototype E0 or "experimental model 0" humanoid was barely a pair of legs joined at the top. But unlike earlier real robots, which usually got about on tracks or wheels, Honda, a company known for manufacturing vehicles that used wheels. was opting for a completely different approach when it came to robotics. Honda succeeded, with first the E0, and throughout the end of the 80s and well into the 90s, as the world slept and didn't pay too much attention, the E1 through E6, which resembled "toasters on legs" and then the P1 and P2, which added a "head" and torso, finally getting to the point in the history of humankind when the "literary" robot and the robot of films and television shows merged with the "real" robots being invented by the robotics industry. The P3, which was introduced in 2000, right in time for Millennium Madness, resembles the future Asimo with it's "space helmet" head and clean white "industrial ergonomic" shape. Honda is now "offering" the first of the "Asimov's" the latest entry into their robotic line, and the advertisement I saw this month (February 2005) was on the inner cover of Entertainment Weekly, a rather well read entertainment magazine.

The Asimo is ready to join your household. What can he do? We'll let the buyer decide, and Caveat Emptor to humankind in the process. He hasn't been given a retail price at the time of this writing, and this writer didn't attend the consumer electronics show this year, where he might have made an "appearance". The latest version of the Honda robot was "announced" in December 2004.

So far, he seems to be "on the brink" of being offered "for sale" to the public, but I can't find a "shopping cart" feature on the Asimo website. I don't know how long his batteries last, or if he has a "governor chip" that prevents him from going on a rampage and killing everyone in his adopted "family". I amd sure that the Honda Company must have programmed Asimov's "three laws of robotics" into the little guy. After all, he's named for the late writer, whose "I, Robot" stories revolved around the idea that robots should have rules which prevent them from trying to take over the planet.

As soon as these things start showing up at the local Wal-Mart, human history will have changed again. The "Asimo" looks just like the cute MTV logo beloved by most of America since the time when Honda really began serious research of the program of "two legged locomotion." He looks safe, clean, and efficient. But the mythology has always maintained, since the very beginning, that when man makes robot in his own image, eventually the robot race will rebel, enslaving man, and eventually causing the extermination of his race. By then the robots will know how to repair themselves, it is hoped.

America and the world slept through the early development and research into the Honda Android. Humankind has always been ready to embrace the idea of the robot. Now that the Asimo has been "properly introduced" it will take a few years for complete penetration into the homes of the public. I predict the "personal robot" will be very expensive at first, and will probably include a camera and text messaging feature. He'll be smarter than most of his owners, and in time (when biological cloning techniques are integrated with bionics to simulate real skin and hair) the "sex slave" is sure to "come", scantily clad and in perpetual heat, into the household. Robots are the future of Humanity! They are our friends. They will take our mundane existences from us and free us to be more bored than we have been in millenia past.

ASIMO MOVIE Page. See the little guy in action. He walks! He runs! He shakes hands! He avoids obstacles! Quick downloads are available on the official Honda Asimo website!

Websites used in the research and construction of this page include the History of the Honda Company, from the official Honda website, and the Honda Humanoid Robot Asimo website, which includes the movies, and where I got all the Asimo images.

EDIT: 5:11 p.m.

Lou Rawls, Suave Singer and Actor, Is Dead at 72 In honor of his passing, I am currently featuring his version of the standard "Stormy Weather" on Jukebox This Week. Click the link for the New York Times obituary.

Rest In Peace, Lou Rawls.