Longest-running humanoid robot development programme

The longest-running humanoid robot development programme began at the Honda Research & Development Co. (JPN) in 1986 and is still active as of 15 January 2019, more than 32 years later.

The Honda humanoid robot programme was initiated on the basis of an in-house report on how robots could be designed to operate around humans in typical domestic and commercial settings. The report concluded that the best approach would be to mimic the physical forms and capabilities these environments had been designed for – i.e. those of humans.

The first prototypes were not fully humanoid robots, as the initial engineering focus was on getting a stable bipedal walking platform before attempting to add an upper body. models E0 (1986) through to E6 (1993) were simply a pair of legs (which grew increasingly human-like with each iteration) topped with a boxy case that held the on-board computers and hardware. The later models (E5 and E6) added limited autonomous navigation and the ability to actively maintain balance.

Honda's first more-or-less humanoid robot was P1 (1993), which could walk on its two legs and manipulate objects with a pair of arms. It still had a large boxy structure to hold its electronics, however, giving it the appearance of having an enormous square head. It was followed by the slightly more streamlined P2 (1996), which was the first self-contained humanoid robot capable of actively maintaining its balance and walking. It also contained sensors that could detect, for example, a person moving into its path and stop to avoid hitting them – important for a robot that stood 182 cm (5 feet 11 inches) tall and weighed 210 kg (462 lb)!

The P3 (1997) took the innovations of the P2 and put them into a much smaller and lighter body, resembling an astronaut with a spacesuit on (complete with a large "backpack" containing batteries and computers). The P3 stood 160 cm (5 feet 2 inches) tall and weighed a slightly more manageable 130 kg (286 lb).

In 2000, Honda unveiled the ASIMO series of robots, which built on the technologies developed for the P series. The original ASIMO stood 120 cm (3 ft 11 in) tall and weighed around 43 kg (95 lb), it had an unprecedented level of balance and mobility for a humanoid robot and 26 degrees of freedom. Subsequent major upgrades in 2004 and 2011 added the ability to run at around 6 km/h (3.7 mph) and increased its number of degrees of freedom to 57.

Honda announced in 2018 that there would be no further hardware upgrades to ASIMO, though improvements to its control systems continue. Honda's robotics team, meanwhile, have moved on to another humanoid project called E2-DR. This is a humanoid robot that can walk or crawl, and is designed for use in hazardous environments (DR stands for "disaster response"). This shift in direction towards more rugged practical designs was inspired by the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. E2-DR can climb ladders, squeeze through narrow gaps and clamber over loose rubble.