July 24, 2003
I saw ASIMO today!
The missus and I were out on errands today and swung into the food court at the local Takashimaya department store to get a sandwich. On the way out, we realized that we were only 15 minutes away from an ASIMO demonstration so we hung out for a few more minutes. I've seen it on TV before and it was pretty cool to see in the metal, I suppose.
The robot (the name stands for Advanced Step in Innovative MObility, a thoroughly Japanese acronym if I've ever seen one; I used to think it was a Japanized salute to Asimov, author of I, Robot) walked out on the dais and talked to the crowd for 15 minutes. It would periodically wave, hold its hand over its eyes and peer into the crowd, waved, and make other assorted movements. The arms and hands were very fluid.
It also did a lot of bowing. It had this horridly annoying and entirely un-robotic (and hence rather undignified) high pitched voice. It gave us information about itself (age (2 1/2), height (~125 cm), weight (~52 kilograms), etc. Then it recited a bunch of business phrases while bowing, essentially pretending to work at the department store. The PR lady who worked the mike and set up the jokes and conversation offered ASIMO a job, an offer that ASIMO pointed out was unnecessary as it was working for the company today and hence already an employee.
Sadly, the hand movements didn't match up with the talking much. I couldn't tell if the movements were pre-programmed or remote controlled, nor if the voice was recorded or just delivered live from someone backstage. The timing of the dialogue was good, but the movements could have been a bit more coordinated. The illusion of life wasn't really sustained.
The robot did dance the hula for us and sang the Hanshin Tigers fight song. It was a horrible singer which set up another joke about where the robot blamed his Tokyo area programmer for doing a bad job with the Osaka area team song. It would prompt the audience for applause after it did such tricks as drawing circles, triangles, and squares, dancing, and whatnot. It also talked about how hot the weather is and wished it had come to Kyoto earlier to see the Gion festival. When the host invited it to watch other festivals in August, the robot held his hands to eyes and "cried," explaining that his planners didn't do a good job planning his itinerary and it would be gone by that time. It was kind of cute.
The worst part for me was when it turned into a commercial whore and spent the last 3 minutes telling everyone to belly up and pay their money for the Atomboy exhibition on the 7th floor and inviting everyone to the all-you-can-eat-and-drink beer garden (only ¥3000 for men, ¥2700 for women). I felt bad for the poor bot. First it had the godawful voice assigned to it and then it hawked ostentatious goods. I suppose they have to finance the research somehow and it doesn't really do much but promote the Honda name. It would have been cooler if it had mingled with the crowd or done something a little less formulaic that highlighted its mobility abilities, but oh well. It was still neat enough to see.
Of course I didn't have my camera with me. I carry it often just in case of stuff like this, but Murphy travels to Japan (or maybe its his cousin Mitsunori?) and cool stuff only happens when I don't have the camera with me. I got some pics on my wife's phone camera, but she hasn't emailed them too me and they are pretty low quality anyway. I'll post them when I get a chance though.
Posted by Nutrimentia at July 24, 2003 09:00 PM | TrackBack