The Most Advanced Robots Today



January 2008
ASIMO Aristotle was the first one who wrote something that nowdays can be understood as the idea of robotics. Aristotle wrote in "The Politics" nearly two dozen centuries ago - "This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that "Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus" as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing."

Czech author and playwright Karel Capek popularized the term robot in his 1920 play, RUR: Rossum's Universal Robots. "Robot" comes from the word "robota" meaning "labor".
Soon after W. Grey Walter 1948 built Elmer and Elsie, two autonomous robots that looked like turtles, Isaac Asimov wrote the Three Laws of Robotics which state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In the 1961 the first industrial robot, Unimate, was online at a General Motors automobile factory to work with heated machines. It's motorized arm weighs 4,000 pounds and has up to six fully programmable axes of motion. 1963, the Rancho Arm was the first computer controlled artificial robotic arm designed as a tool for the handicapped.
The first anthropomorphic robot built in the world (1973) was WABOT-1, made in Waseda University, Japan. It was able to communicate with a person in Japanese and to measure distances and directions to the objects using external receptors. It has artificial ears, eyes and an artificial mouth.

The Honda Motor Company developed ASIMO, the most advanced humanoid robot in the world.
ASIMO is the first humanoid robot in the world that can walk independently and climb stairs.
Honda wanted to create a robot that would be a helper for people so it can also understand spoken commands, recognize voices and faces and with its arms and hands it can turn on light switches, open doors, carry objects...

4 ft 3in (130 cm) high
119 pounds (54 kg) weight
walking speed 1.7 mph (2.7 km/hour)
running speed 3.7 mph (6 km/hour)

World's first running humanoid robot was SONY's QRIO (2003). QRIO can run at 23 cm/s, and is capable of voice and face recognition. It remembers people as well as their likes and dislikes. QRIO's internal battery lasts about 1 hour.