Word: honda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sadly, ASIMO is not for sale. Honda, which has built 20 ASIMOs, won't say how much it cost to develop, but the firm is putting them to tentative commercial use as a public relations gimmick. Honda is renting ASIMOs to four companies, including IBM Japan and a science museum in Tokyo, for reception duties at the circuit-scrambling price of $163,000 a year...
...Indeed, there's a gaping cost-benefit gulf to be bridged before Honda's little walking man can evolve into the next Walkman. Consumers have been conditioned to expect robots to behave like C-3PO of Star Wars. But creating artificially intelligent machines that can sense and interact with the environment in a convincing way is a monumentally complex computing task. The Japanese government's Humanoid Robotics Project set out five years ago to deliver a robot versatile enough to perform hard labor in hazardous conditions. Some $40 million has been spent but the project's HRP-1 robot still...
...racing to build more specialized machines. Matsushita, maker of the Panasonic brand, has developed a vacuum-cleaning droid with powerful dust sensors, while Sanyo is working to commercialize a remote-controlled guard dog equipped with a digital camera and mobile phone. Sony has taken a slightly different approach. While Honda researchers pursue the holy grail of the film Bicentennial Man?a mechanized butler?Sony's vision is closer to the sci-fi movie A.I., which features a boy-bot that offers unconditional robot lovin'. The company has sold more than 100,000 of its toylike AIBOs since the robo...
...Kazuo Tanie, a respected robot researcher and top government adviser, says the technology remains too difficult for any single company to master alone, and the business would ripen more quickly if there were less competition and more pooling of resources. Manufacturers, however, hate the idea of cooperation. After all, Honda's and Sony's corporate images are burnished by their keen machines?they demonstrate technological superiority over rivals. Even if it can't do the dishes, as a walking billboard ASIMO does just fine...
...BUSINESS Sony vs. Honda: Robot wars...