P2, an embryonic universal robot
Not a
man in a spacesuit, but a self-contained research robot developed
over a decade by a group of thirty engineers at Honda Motors of
Japan, perhaps as a hedge against future reverses in the automobile
market. The ``backpack'' contains power and computing. The
machine has fully functional arms and camera eyes, and can find
stairs and move objects. Its most advanced skill, so far, is
walking, on flat and sloped ground, and up and down stairs. It is as
humanlike in its motion as in its appearance. If pushed, it shifts
its posture or begins to walk to keep equilibrium. It stands 180 cm
tall and weighs 210 kilograms. At several million dollars, with a
15-minute battery lifetime, it is too expensive and power-consumptive
to be practical, but its development continues and it is surely a
precursor of future universal robots. A slightly smaller successor,
the P3, with a 25-minute battery life, is probably the most advanced
self-contained robot today.
Foreground courtesy of Honda Motors Corp. Background photo by Ella
Moravec.