Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

What Honda is in this archive

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. is the company behind ASIMO, the humanoid robot it announced from Tokyo on 20 November 2000^[1]. Honda's place in a history of robotics is less about one product than about a long programme: a manufacturing company that kept a humanoid robotics research effort going for years, moving from experimental walking machines to a robot presented as able to decide its own behaviour.

A humanoid robot is a machine built to stand, walk and work in spaces made for people, with a body organised roughly along human lines. The hard part is balance. A two-legged machine is unstable almost all the time, so it has to sense its own posture and correct itself continuously while it moves.

The starting point: 1986

Honda says its basic research and development in humanoid robotics began in 1986, with the goal of an autonomous walking robot useful to individuals and society^[1]. The company's own development history begins with the E0 bipedal walking robot of that same year^[2]. Bipedal simply means two-legged. For a machine, each step is a controlled fall: shift the weight onto one leg, lift the other foot, put it down ahead, and recover balance before the body tips over.

The E series and the P series

The E series of experimental walking robots ran from 1986 to 1993^[2]. The word "experimental" describes their role: machines for testing whether walking worked, not products handed to users. The P series of prototypes was then developed from 1993 through 1997^[2]. Between them, the two series cover the first decade of the programme.

Honda announced the P2 in December 1996 and completed the P3 in September 1997^[2].

ASIMO and its generations

The name ASIMO came with the announcement of 20 November 2000^[1]. Honda introduced ASIMO for rental business in 2001^[2], and announced a new ASIMO with intelligence technology in 2002^[2]. Honda said the 2011 ASIMO was equipped with the world's first autonomous behavior control technology^[2].

Read in sequence, the labels shift from movement towards intelligence. "Rental business" describes how the robot was placed: users took it on hire rather than buying it outright. "Autonomous" describes who decides — a robot with autonomous behaviour control chooses its own actions instead of only carrying out direct commands.

Where it sits on the timeline

Laid out in order, the dates form a single line of development: E0 in 1986, the E series to 1993, the P series from 1993 to 1997, P2 in December 1996, P3 completed in September 1997, ASIMO announced in November 2000, ASIMO offered on rental in 2001, a new ASIMO with intelligence technology in 2002, and the 2011 ASIMO with autonomous behaviour control technology^[2].

Two things stand out in Honda's own account. The first is length: the distance from the E0 to the 2011 ASIMO is a quarter of a century. The second is direction: the early machines are described in terms of walking, the later ones in terms of intelligence and autonomy. Walking is a control problem in the body — keeping an unstable structure upright, step after step. Autonomy is a control problem in the software — deciding what to do next. Honda's timeline is a record of a robot programme moving from the first to the second.