ASIMO/Humanoid Robots/CoR-Lab Robots

Humanoids in general:

• Q: When will humanoids be on the market ?
  A: That will take at least 15 years or longer.
• Q: What will they cost ?
  A: Will likely first be “lifestyle” products, cost e.g. as much as a car.
• Q: Will robots substitute caretakers for the elderly?
  A: No, they will rather be partners and helpers.
• Q: When will we see other cognitive technology products on the market ?
  A: Cognitive technology alread enters mass markets, e.g. in digital cameras, navigation devices, multi-media cellphone etc. It will enter fabrication within the next few years.
• Q: When will robots be truely intelligent ?
  A: We will experience surprises, because the technology rapidly develops. But what is "true" intelligence ?
• Q: Why the Humanoid appearence, what is it good for?
  A: Humans accept them more easily as partners and behave towards humanoids like towards children, because both have limited cognitive capabilities.
   

ASIMO:

• Q: What did Bielefeld pay for the ASIMOs, what does an ASIMO cost?
  A: Invaluable, you can not buy it, you need to get it.
• Q: Why did CoR-Lab get the ASIMOs ?
  A: Because of Bielefeld's excellence in interdisciplinary research and long term cooperation with HRI.
• Q: What does CoR-Lab want to do with the ASIMOs?
  A: Make them more intellingent by teaching them to learn and by integration of capabilities like speech, vision, and movement. We start with transfering existing results like e.g. the speech gesture integration of MAX.
• Q: How many ASIMO robots exist ?
  A: About 60, most of them are in Japan at Honda Research.
• Q: How much does an ASIMO weigh ? How large is ASIMO ?
  A: It has 52 kg weight and about 150 cm height.
• Q: Which sensors does ASIMO have ?
  A: The ASIMO research platform can sense forces from the gound, the position of the body, and the joints. It has cameras for visual processing and microphones for audition.
• Q: Can ASIMO appear at my birthday, abitur celebration, company jubilee, publicity event ?
  A: No. ASIMO is in Bielefeld exclusively for research and may not appear outside the lab. Show events with ASIMO can be staged only through a professional Honda team located in Brussel.
• Q: Is it possible to visit ASIMO in the lab ?
  A: No. CoR-Lab can currently not offer public access to it's labs.

Other CoR-Lab Robots:

• Q: What kind of robots does CoR-Lab have access to ?
  A: Besides ASIMO, projects of CoR-Lab work with anthopomorphic hands, torso robots, mobile platforms, and the humanoid robot iCub. CoR-Lab also is in command of a new prototype of a 7-DOF professional automation robot developed by the DLR and produced by Kuka.
• Q: Does CoR-Lab own these robots ?
  A: No. All mentioned platforms (except the DLR-Kuka) belong to the research groups  of Prof. Ritter and Prof. Sagerer at the Bielefeld Faculty of Technology. CoR-Lab projects cooperate to get access.
• Q: What is the humanoid iCub ?
  A: iCub is a child robot developed in European projects and funded by the EU. It is the European reference platform for developmental robotics and is able to crawl, grasp, move the whole body, but can not walk.