1. ASIMO
Dev Bahadur Poudel
May 2, 2012
1 Introduction
ASIMO is the state of the art humanoid robot in the world. ASIMO stands for “Advance Step in Inno-
vative Mobility”.ASIMO was developed by Honda Motor Co. Ltd, a Japanese Corporation.[1] It was
named with reference to an American professor and science fiction writer Issac Asimov who was credited
for proposing Three Laws of Robotics. ASIMO was officially unveiled on 2000 after fifteen years of
research.The purpose to build ASIMO is to build a robot that can help human being and live in harmony
with people.
2 Features/Abilities
ASIMO has weight of 48kg and height 1.3 m. ASIMO has the ability to walk and run. It has the walking
speed of 2.7km/hr and running speed of 9km/hr.[1] It is capable of running backward and continuously
jumping up and down.It is also capable to interact with the gestures and human being postures of .ASIMO
can perform task according to the gesture of human being.For example it can recognize an indicated
location and move to that location.It shakes the hand when hand is given.Another example of gesture
recognition is when a person waves hand it also waves its hand.
It can recognize faces of person and also distinguish the person. It can recognize people by their
faces and by their voices. It can address people by their name.It can distinguish between voices and other
sounds. It turn to face the speaker when its name is called. It also recognize sudden, unusual sounds
like falling of object and collision. It has ability to recognize obstacles and avoid the obstacles during
the movement. It is able to assess its immediate environment and recognize the position of obstacles
and avoid them to prevent collision.ASIMO has ability to interact with human significantly. It can greet
approaching people , follow them, move in the direction they indicate.It has internet connectivity and can
provide information to people. Hence ASIMO is the world’s first most intelligent humanoid robot.
ASIMO can maintain balance while walking on uneven surfaces and slopes. It can also maintain
balance when pushed or impacted to a certain degree. It falls down when pushed strongly. It cannot get
back on its feet by itself.
Joints DOFs Total
Head Neck Joint(up/down,Left/Right,Rotation) 3 DOF
Arm Shoulder joints(forward/backward, up/down,Rotation 3 DOF
Elbow joints(forward/backward) 1DOF
Wrist joints(up/down,left/right,rotation) 3 DOF 2 arms*7 DOFs=14
Hands 4 fingers/thumb 2 DOF 2 hands* 2 DOFs=4
Hips Rotation 1 DOF 1
Legs Crotch joint(forward/backward, left/right, rotation) 3 DOF
Knee joints(forward/backward) 1 DOF
Ankle joint(forward/backward, left/right) 2 DOF 2 legs*6 DOFs=12
Total 34
3 Basic Design Policy/Mechanism
Joints/Degrees of Freedoms
ASIMO has head ,hands and legs which movements are similar to human beings. Joint angle sensors
are used to determine the angle and position of the body. Force and torque sensors are used in ASIMO
to find force and torque of each motors.There are gyro sensors to measure the orientation of ASIMO.The
degrees of freedom in each joint is as shown in the table.
Latest ASIMO has 57 degrees of freedom.
Compliance Control

2. Landing impact force is absorbed by the rubber brushes inserted in the feet of the robot. The rubber
deforms elastically in the vertical direction which prevents vibration of leg and accomplish control of
compliance[3].
Posture Balance
The position of the body is control using Zero Moment Point Control Mechanism. ASIMO bends its
legs to maintain a stable movement pattern based on ZMP trajectories.[3]
Movement
ASIMO uses i-Walk technology[2] ,a predicted movement control.It can predict its next movement
in real time and shift its center of gravity in anticipated direction. The body posture is balanced during
walking using Desired Zero Moment Point Control[3]. The bipedal movement of ASIMO is based on
functions involving dynamic walking based on sensory feedback and predictive movement planning.
When ASIMO walks, it predicts an ideal movement path consisting of Zero Moment Points and tilts its
body sideways or forward to shift its center of gravity in anticipation. Real-time predictive movement-
planning enables ASIMO to make minor adjustments to its movement trajectory.
Technology/Intelligence
ASIMO is controlled by a laptop or a portable computer controller unit through wireless network
system.ASIMO has a three-dimensional computer processor that was created by Honda and consists of
processors, a signal converter and memory. The computer that controls ASIMO’s movement is housed in
the robot’s waist area and can be controlled by a PC, wireless controller, or voice commands. ASIMO
can comprehend and carry out tasks based on simple voice commands given in English that have been
pre-programmed into its on board memory. ASIMO has several sensors to acquire the raw data from the
environment. It has gyro sensors to sense the orientation, force sensors to obtain the forces, microphones
to detect the sound and cameras for vision to obtain image pixels.ASIMO also has a camera mounted in
its torso[1] used to view markers on the floor and on stairs.
ASIMO’s vision system is responsible for processing spatial perception, object-mapping, human
tracking, facial recognition, and gestural-postural detection. It relies on stereo images (of two views
from slightly different angles) provided by the frame grabber that is connected to the two color board
cameras on the head unit of the robot. 3D and moving objects are identified by calculating depth of space
based on the Sum of Absolute values of Differences (SAD) method using the images that are captured in
black-and-white and calibrated for lens distortion. A local map of 3D objects is constructed and provided
to the agent programs for walking and movement. The vision system also identifies moving parts of the
moving objects, from which the recognition of human gestures and postures is processed and provided to
the agent programs for human-robot interaction and eye control.[4]
ASIMO can identify multiple people in a scene by using the snake algorithm to distinguish the con-
tours of human shapes. When in motion, ASIMO tracks humans by using an optical flow-based algorithm
to lock on their changing positions in the image data. 2D gesture recognition algorithm can identify hand-
shake, hand-circling, farewell, hand swing, high hand, and come here-call based on the probabilities for
a given position of the hand using the Bayes statistical model. 3D gesture recognition algorithm can
identify where a person is pointing at based on the relative positions of the person’s head and hand from
the depth map data. Face is recognized by applying the eigen vector Method on the face contour and eye
image data.[4]
ASIMO relies on the sound data to be situationally aware of the surrounding outside its field of vision.
The sound’s direction is calculated based on the volume and time differences of the signals at two separate
microphones. It can discern human voices and footsteps from the sound data and look when a person calls
its name, or something falls on the floor.
ASIMO uses sonar, infrared sensor and rangefinder to detect the obstacles. It makes an in memory
local map[4] using vision. It reconstruct a map after obstacle detection and move to the point of interest
in autonomous manner.
4 Criticism /Limitations
When ASIMO falls down by aggressive external forces then it cannot stand up at its own.ASIMO is
targeted to mimic human beings however it lack some senses of human. It has vision and auditory
capabilities but does not have capabilities like smelling and feeling . It has no emotional capability for
happiness and disgusting expressions.
Robots are build with purpose to work in hazardous environment but ASIMO does not have such
capability. ASIMO is used as receptionist in an office. This means that implementation of large number of
ASIMOs in various sectors of office can increase the unemployment rate of human. ASIMOs are not used
in Military missions. They cannot be used in underwater environment and other risky environment where
human cannot work.Honda is seeking to develop a robot based on the ASIMO to handle the radiation
leakage at the Fukushima nuclear power plant that resulted with the earthquake and tsunami that hit
Japan in March, 2011.
They are also not designed in weightless environment like outer space.

3. References
[1] ASIMO http://asimo.honda.com/downloads/pdf/honda-asimo-robot-fact-sheet.pdf. Technical report.
[2] ASIMO Technical Information 2007 http://asimo.honda.com/downloads/pdf/asimo-technical-
information.pdf. Technical report.
[3] K. Hirai, M. Hirose, Y. Haikawa, and T. Takenaka. The development of honda humanoid robot. In
Robotics and Automation, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on, volume 2,
pages 1321–1326 vol.2, 1998. ID: 1.
[4] Y. Sakagami, R. Watanabe, C. Aoyama, S. Matsunaga, N. Higaki, and K. Fujimura. The intelli-
gent asimo: system overview and integration. In Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on, volume 3, pages 2478–2483 vol.3, 2002. ID: 1.