Say hello to ASIMO, the 4ft 3in tall robot from Honda

This week, we celebrate the achievements of one of Honda’s most incredible products – the ASIMO robot.

Meet Asimo

Say hello to ASIMO, the 4ft 3in tall robot from Honda. He can run, hold hands and play football.

He’s even conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

ASIMO is an acronym for “Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility” and was first developed by Honda in 1986. ASIMO is designed to be a people-friendly robot. Its size makes it ideal for the human environment and its features help it interact with whatever and whoever it comes across.

Can you boogie?

Asimo is programmed to dance in time to music – just watch him go in this clip.

I can run

An amazing amount of work has gone in to perfecting ASIMO’s legs and the way it walks. Early models fell countless times only to be picked up and tweaked by their makers.

Amazingly, ASIMO can now run at 6km/h – to the amazement of bystanders.

The impossible dream

This week ASIMO took to the stage in front of an amazed crowd to take on his biggest task so far – conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

No mean feat for a human conductor, it was impossible to know how the 45kg robot would handle the task.

Dressed in a white ‘space suit’, ASIMO walked out onto the stage and began to speak.
 
“Hello, everyone. This is a magnificent concert hall.”

Showing amazing physical dexterity he led the musicians through ‘The Impossible Dream’, from the show Man of La Mancha – the song which Honda has used in recent advertising campaigns.

Even ASIMO can't always be perfect. See it taking a fall on the Auto Trader blog.