Honda’s Asimo robot demonstrates advanced intelligence

Robotics has got to be simultaneously one of the most exciting and ignored high tech stories on the planet.

I’m not talking about robotics in manufacturing which is currently being used worldwide across many industries, especially among the automakers.

Rather the humanoid robots like the one Honda Motors is now showing off called Asimo.

Asimo takes your drink order, fetches the drink tray and delivers it.

It can also work in conjunction with a robot partner so that each doesn’t get in the way of the other and each takes on a different part of a task.

There are those short-sighted folks who think this kind of humanoid behavior is a useless pursuit and not worth the millions of dollars in R &D nor the retail price should these robots ever be sold to the public.

But think of all the things this machine has to be able to do in order to deliver a tray of drinks.

Asimo must understand—suddenly robotics renders ordinary language insufficient because the word ‘understanding’ is usually the domain of humans and a few high level species and implies intelligence—in order to take a person’s drink order, walk to where the drinks are located while discerning objects that might be blocking its path, work with the objects, like cups and saucers, and deliver the drink in a manner gentle enough so that not a drop is spilled.

Years ago I suggested creating a robotic bomb sniffing dog, with a chemical analyzer placed in its nose that could be sent into areas too dangerous for humans.

The U.S. Army actually has robots, they look like small tanks rather than dogs, that can disarm or at least blow itself and the bomb up before it detonates in a populated area.

There are also more peaceful uses for robots. Those that can recreate human or animal behavior might be used to serve as companions or as aides to the infirm.

Robotics was definitely one of the most underreported stories of the 20th Century. Personally I hope it will earn its rightful place as one of the great game changing technologies of the 21st Century.