by Bonnie Friend
My first encounter with ASIMO was in Brussels earlier this year where its latest incarnation made its European debut. However, my second meeting with the little robot provided an important difference, the environment.
No longer in the slick confines of Honda Robotics, the sunny autumn morning saw ASIMO and its entourage grace the headquarters of The Telegraph newspaper, and in doing so proved that its particular brand of charm is relevant both inside and outside the factory walls.
While engineers still envisage ASIMO to be a work in progress, as far as its eventual use is concerned, an outing like this is extremely interesting. Sure, it’s an entertaining spectacle to see the animated machine walking, talking and kicking a ball, but this is about more than putting on a show; this is a big test both for ASIMO and the people it meets.
ASIMO showed off its football skills
The future of ASIMO
The ultimate goal is for this feat of engineering to become helpful to people in their daily lives, the beginnings of which we can see with its newfound ability to carry a tray and pour a drink. Its rendition of The Robot dance one assumes is simply a combination of showing off and personal amusement on behalf of the engineers, but it is much appreciated nonetheless. For this usefulness to prevail however, it isn’t just a case of what the robot itself can do, but rather the way people interact with it and accept it.
Hollywood hasn’t always done robots a massive service. For the most part, the silver screen will have them taking over the world or doing us all out of our jobs. It isn’t friendly stuff. So ASIMO is something of a spokesperson for the unassuming, amicable sidekick of the future, and what better audience on which to test his diplomacy than an office full of journalists on a Monday morning?
You see everything about ASIMO has been created for our intuitive comfort. It mimics our movements, such as turning its head before it sets off in any particular direction, in the same way that we do; it speaks in a decisively gentle tone of voice, and even its humanoid shape reflects a sense of familiarity.
ASIMO’s intuitive capabilities are designed with us in mind
Making people smile
So back to the case in point, how did our little friend fare against The Telegraph test? As a crowd gathered to watch him demonstrate his ability to kick a ball, talk to onlookers, dance and deliver refreshments, the consistently heart-warming reaction was one of happiness.
It is tricky to get an entire room of people to smile on a Monday morning, but that was exactly what ASIMO did. The reaction was a wonderfully human one against the backdrop of an ordinary environment visited by an extraordinary piece of technology, and proving that as advanced as our world becomes, human intuition is still a vital part of its ability to integrate successfully.
As my photographer, Rob, and I left the building, two little boys who had joined their mother at the office for the morning in order to meet ASIMO buzzed with joy. Ever the unbridled benchmark for truth-telling their gaze remained permanently fixed on the spot where the robot had stood mere moments before and the eldest of the two concluded: ‘Robots are big aren’t they?’
With all the profoundness unique to a six-year-old, it’s a point that seems to encapsulate the future relevance of robots, and if ASIMO’s harmonious integration is anything to go by then I wholeheartedly suspect he’s right.
