[anigbrowl]

That's true enough, but only the military and EMS need robots that can instantly handle unfamiliar terrain. Meanwhile, the Japanese are most of the way towards a consumer product, since the interior of a building is highly predictable.

[FrojoS]

Good point, but if you don't need to handle unstructured terrain, you might just as well put the robot on wheels. The humanoids robot Justin from DLR [1] for instance has an omnidirectional wheeled platform that even allows for adaptive foot print. The only current advantage for ASIMO that I see at the moment, is that it doesn't have to take the elevator but can use stairs.

[1] Here is a good video from 2009 that shows that Justin is capable of the same tasks that Honda showed of today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPwpGpMoAxs

[anigbrowl]

Quite - and with 4 wheels, I imagine that stairs would be manageable for Justin as well. You might like this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1qJyAWZeV4

I think US industrial/product designers are seriously underestimating the market for consumer-facing humanoid robots.

[FrojoS]

> with 4 wheels, I imagine that stairs would be manageable for Justin as well

In theory yes, but not with the current design.

> You might like this too: Yes, ABB's Frida looks impressive, but so far there seems to be very little information about the technical data.

> I think US industrial/product designers are seriously underestimating the market for consumer-facing humanoid robots.

There is rumor, that Rodney Brooks's Heartland Robotics http://www.heartlandrobotics.com/ will release something similar to Frida soon.