The mechanism and conceptual logic behind one of the most humanoid robots ever designed: Asimo

ASIMO can perform most of the daily human activities. The engineers behind the project had taken humans as an ideal example for the robot, but the manufacturing and designing process was tougher than expected. Recently, ASIMO has retired to be replaced with more sophisticated robots. However, it was sure one of the pioneers of humanoid robot history.

Since ASIMO is one of the most complex humanoid robots ever created, it took a long time to produce ASIMO. Honda’s development of a humanoid robot began in 1986. The name ASIMO actually stands for the idea of “Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility”. The whole development process of ASIMO completed in 2000; however, ASIMO is currently the most advanced humanoid robot designed. But, why is it worldwide accepted that ASIMO’s resemblance to human daily life action and activities is the most sophisticated one on the market? This question leads us to the system devised in ASIMO.

ASIMO’s height is 130 cm ( 4ft 3in) and it weighs approximately 50 kg. By the foot sensor placed under the feet of ASIMO, ASIMO is able to capture the surface that it is walking or running on and act accordingly. Honda's technology provides a smooth transition for ASIMO’s movements and also takes precautions for the unusual surfaces that can harm ASIMO’s sensors.

As explained on the ASIMO’s official website, ASIMO’s all functions can be summarized as follows:

In order to provide interactive communication with humans and other humanoid robots, ASIMO uses a modern system that we also encounter in our daily lives while using google or navigation systems. Speech recognition and synthesis is provided by the commercial voice recognition engine and speech synthesis product. The sound source detection mechanism is capable of detecting whether the voice is coming from a person or another object. This supports and develops the interaction between humans and ASIMO in a way that they both can understand each other’s commands. However, for now, ASIMO is able to comprehend the sounds coming from a 5-meter distance. The reason for that is that the device used to clear the speech and sound recognition can provide a minimum resolution of the voices coming from 5 meters away. That’s why the system is restricted to 5 meters in hearing and responding.

ASIMO’s legs and arms consist of multiple joints which actually originated from the human body. Since the human body is able to act and move by the various biological joints in our system, Honda’s influence on joints has led them to provide the same conceptual usage and mechanism in ASIMO's production. By that, ASIMO is able to run 6 km/h. Honda uses a simple kinematics approach while designing ASIMO to run and walk. “By tilting the center of gravity of ASIMO’s body inside of the circle to maintain balance with the amount of centrifugal force experienced” is the quotation from Honda’s first-hand booklet about the ASIMO. Nonetheless, while slalom running, the center of gravity is moved toward the direction of the turn before the actual turning takes place – just like when a person skis with their skis parallel.

ASIMO works with the 51.8 v Lithium-ion (Li-ION) battery. Since ASIMO is composed of various electrical wires and energy-consuming systems that overall provide ASIMO to work and act like a human, ASIMO consumes a lot of energy compared to many other robots. Therefore, the current model of ASIMO is just able to function in its maximum capacity for approximately one hour.

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Resources

https://asimo.honda.com/downloads/pdf/asimo-technical-faq.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3972237_The_intelligent_ASIMO_System_overview_and_integration

https://asimo.honda.com/news/intelligence-technologies-introduced-for-hondas-humanoid-robot-asimo/newsarticle_0009/#:~:text=Distinguishing%20sounds&text=and%20other%20sounds.-,For%20example%2C%20ASIMO%20can%3A,and%20face%20in%20that%20direction

https://asimo.honda.com/asimo-specs/