The power of a dream has driven Masato Hirose, a precision engineer at Honda Motor, to create something that was once just science fiction.

Through 14 years of hard effort, Hirose never became discouraged or gave up on the idea. Instead, he used his failures to push forward until he finally succeeded in building an advanced humanoid robot, known as Asimo.

Asimo, which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is the outcome of Hirose's dream, as he believes that one day this kind of robot will become a part of our society.

From just an idea, Hirose began practical development by starting to build the lower part of a two-legged robot, which became the foundation of his humanoid.

"I had the idea of developing a humanoid 20 years ago in hopes of making a robot to be our friend. Even though I knew that it would not be easy, I tried harder and harder on the development until I succeeded in giving birth to Asimo 14 years later," he said.

Even though, during a long decade of development, Hirose faced many obstacles and failures, he never stopped working as he kept one thing in mind, the power to make the dream come true.

He said that to build a human-like robot, a big challenge was making the machine walk naturally, and this was the key step he had to achieve.

"We spent four to five years solely observing the walking patterns of humans and animals to understand the movement of muscles related to mobility, so we could design a walking pattern for the robot," he said.

However, when it came to real development, errors occurred. Many times his robot failed to walk. "Every time I saw my robot fall, I told myself that I must make it walk on its own, and this drove me to keep going," he said.

Hirose overcame all obstacles with the development of seven generations of the lower part of the two-legged robot and the three generations of the humanoid prototype, the P1, P2 and P3, which are all Asimo's predecessors.

For Hirose, Asimo is a showcase of the evolution of robotic technology. He made Asimo look friendlier than the cumbersome robots he had built in previous generations. He downsized Asimo from 1.6 metres tall and 130 kilograms in the P3 generation to only 1.2 metres and 52 kg.

"It's really difficult to choose a proper size for Asimo," he said. "As we want to make it really live with humans, we decided to build it like a Grade 1 child." At this size, he said, it would be easier and more comfortable for people to live with Asimo.

Asimo was born in 2000. Designed like a little astronaut carrying his small backpack on his back, Asimo can live with humans and help them work, while being a friend. He can walk about and climb up and down stairs while performing tasks within the human living environment.

Asimo can walk at a top speed of 1.6 kilometres per hour. With a built-in technology called i-Walk, Asimo can make his own movements and shift his centre of gravity to make turns to avoid obstructions, while walking naturally on various kinds of terrain.

Like humans, the robot also has two hands with five fingers each. Each hand has a grasping force of about 0.5kg while the arms have a 105-degree range of movement to help the little robot handle all kinds of tedious work.

Six years after birth, a development path for Asimo still lies ahead. Like a proud parent, Hirose says Asimo will not stop developing as he wants to see his son grow up gradually.

Hirose and his team have put new efforts into making Asimo mature. The robot can also speed up his walking pace from 1.6kph to 2.7kph with a running speed of 6kph. The team has also made Asimo much smarter. Equipped with sensors, Asimo can recognise people by reading information contained on an IC tele-interaction communication card.

Hirose's dream does not end there. He also hopes to make Asimo eventually serve people in many ways. Not only will it be an assistant to take care of the elderly and children, Asimo in the future will be able to work for humans, especially in hazardous tasks like clearing minefields or doing battlefield surveillance.

"That's what I want to see from Asimo," Hirose said.

Asimo is an example of the power of the dream of an engineer who successfully turned his imagination into reality. Without Hirose's determination, Asimo would have remained science fiction.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation

Tokyo