ASIMO ASIMO is a humanoid robot created by Honda.

Introduced in 2000, ASIMO, which is an acronym for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, was created to be a helper to people. With aspirations of helping people who lack full mobility, ASIMO is used to encourage young people to study science and mathematics. At 130 cm (4 feet, 3 inches) tall and 54 kg (119 lbs), ASIMO was designed to operate in real-world environments, with the ability to walk or run on two feet at speeds up to 6 kilometres per hour (3.7 mph). In the USA, ASIMO is part of the Innoventions attraction at Disneyland and has been featured in a 15-minute show called "Say 'Hello' to Honda's ASIMO" since June 2005. The robot has made public appearances around the world, including the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Miraikan Museum and Honda Collection Hall in Japan and the Ars Electronica festival in Austria. Overview Even with latest intelligence software, ASIMO is not a completely standalone robot. The software is structured into two parts with most of the main processing done on-board, and heavy database work and external interfaces handled via the ASIMO Server. ASIMO communicates with the server through a wireless network connection. There are several computers in the robot to process planning, vision, sounds/voice, and motor and power control. The server is run on a PC, and it contains a global map, a reservation system, personal data, an Internet connection, and a dialog manager. The following shows how the software is distributed. ASIMO Server: External Systems Resources

&

Planning

Vision &

Auditory Control

Brains On Board Let's look a little closer at the functions running inside ASIMO. Honda has several programs running simultaneously in a multi-shell configuration to let ASIMO interact with the world. Progressing out physically from the robot, specific stimuli would affect different parts of the intelligence program. Closest in at under a foot is voice recognition. This is followed by face recognition at a few feet away. Other shells included sound source detection, gesture recognition, moving object detection, obstacle avoidance, path planning, and a highlevel task planning.

The planning software uses a hierarchical structure with the processing distributed as shown in the table above. ASIMO functions autonomously with high level tasks split between those that are deliberately planned and those which react to environmental stimuli. To work its way around, the robot uses a combination of map-based navigation and dynamic obstacle avoidance. In addition to ASIMO's capability to just roam around, there are a number of algorithms dedicated to interaction with people. Mr. Sakagami explained how the software uses human body language to decide what it should do next. A person can instruct ASIMO to go to a different location just by pointing to it, or the robot can be told to follow you to it. ASIMO also reacts to other gestures and postures, and can even copy the human's actions. Some body language that the robot recognizes include: Gestures - attention, bye-bye, come here, circle Postures high-hand, of body, face side, handshake, bow, body

side-hand,

low-hand,

front

One of the posture recognition features, which Mr. Sakagami explained in detail, was the "pointed hand" posture. The detection algorithm breaks the problem into two parts. First, it recognizes the pointing hand and determines its principle 3D axis. This is refined by features extracted at the tip of the hand, and is then combined with the arm axis direction. The second part of the problem involves determining the 3D head position combined with the hand to produce a face-hand axis direction. Finally, the two vectors are averaged to form a pointing axis direction, which is used to calculate the crossing point on the floor. ASIMO will then proceed to move to the indicated position. During the presentation, we were shown some video footage of the gesture/posture recognition in action. This feature really does give the impression that ASIMO is attentive to its human companions. To get these high level interactions to work, the robot uses several levels of vision algorithms. Simple features, such as edges, distance maps, and patches of skin color, are extracted from images captured by a pair of stereoscopic color cameras. These primitives are put together to determine larger features such as movement and 3D partial shapes. For instance, to determine a moving object, ASIMO first looks for patches in the image where the distance is relatively uniform and close relative to the surrounding areas. Edge detection is used to outline the object and extract a normalized contour. When the process is repeated over a time period, the robot can track the direction and speed of a moving object as well as note any changes in shape. This is useful in gesture/posture recognition. Face detection and recognition algorithms also use extracted object information, but use more of the finer details from the simple feature generator. (See diagram for details). Another use of objects is for building a local map of its surroundings. This allows ASIMO to walk around and avoid bumping into obstacles. Honda calls the outcome of this process a "Vision Bumper". When you have a million-dollar robot walking around in the real world, it's best to have all bumping done virtually. The map is a 360 pie with ASIMO in the center. The pie is sliced into N slices with each slice given either a state of "danger" or "safe" depending on whether there is an object in that section. As it moves around, ASIMO uses this data to build up an internal representation of its surroundings. This information is also sent back to the server to update the global map. Speaking of bumping, there was an interesting question raised during the talk. Someone asked if ASIMO could get up from a fall the way that Sony's humanoid robot, the SDR-4X, does. Mr. Sakagami's answer was that ASIMO "doesn't fall". Honda designed in defensive balancing maneuvers to prevent a fall. When pressed, he admitted that, no, ASIMO could not get up the same way as the SDR-4X. On the other hand, it does make sense not to let a million-dollar robot hit the ground. To complement the excellent vision capabilities, ASIMO has separate algorithms for processing sound. The software is broken into two main areas: speech recognition and sound source detection. The speech recognition is based on the IBM Voice software along with a specialized ASIMO acoustic model. Working in concert with the recognition module is a speech synthesis engine built off of IBM's Pro Talker. The sound source detection software can determine the direction of a sound by cross correlating it with time differentials. It can also decide whether a sound is a human voice or not by analyzing the envelope of the frequency spectrum. ASIMO Server ASIMO uses its connection to the ASIMO Server when it needs more information. In some ways it's like our long-term memory. ASIMO has the ability to detect that he is looking at a face, but to determine whose face it is, the server is accessed to search the face database. Once a person has been identified, their personal data file, also on the server, can be queried for more information. Also on the server is the dialog manager, which is used to interpret and generate words to engage a human in conversation.

There are a few functions that the server performs, which do not fit the long-term memory analogy. Our brains do not have the capability for direct Internet connection, though I know some teenagers who would be happy with that modification. ASIMO does, which opens up the possibility for the robot to be a personal agent. We could ask ASIMO for today's weather or maybe have him set up a hotel reservation. One final functionality on the ASIMO Server that Mr. Sakagami talked about in detail was the global map system. The system that was described seemed to include more than just mapping. The display showed a blueprint-style diagram on the left containing walls, objects in the room, a representation of the robot, and a planned route. On the right there were control buttons for start, pause, home, and "e-stop" (whatever that is). There was also a status window for monitoring some telemetered data, e.g., position, internal programming states, communication info, recognized objects, and current behavior status. The maps, obstacles, and routes can be edited and saved to files. The other interesting feature of the global map system is its ability to use a simulated ASIMO for testing or training. I'm sure this saved some wear and tear on the million-dollar real robots while getting the bugs worked out. This sophisticated software is being used by some of the beta users of ASIMO in Japan. This allows the robot to act in a limited way as a receptionist, visitors guide, or "spokesbot". For more information on ASIMO, check out Honda's website: http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/.

Reporters: AL-JEE M. VELORIA SHELLA MAE GARBOZA CELESTE LUCES