Honda strives to create new products and drive technological progress based on the spirit with which it was founded, which can be summed up as pursuing “Technology is for people.” placing “Manufacturing starts with understanding people.” In addition to considering research into humanoid robots a core part of that mission, we have worked to endow robots with a variety of functions to emulate people's intelligence and ultimate level of mobility.

Honda launched its robot research program in 1986 in an effort to fulfill its organizational aspiration of playing a useful role in people's lives and enriching human society. Since that time, the successes of the program have continued and multiplied through such advances as the P2, announced in 1996 as the world's first autonomous, humanoid, bipedal robot, and ASIMO, announced in 2000 as a humanoid robot developed with the ability to integrate into human lifestyles. In 2011, we celebrated 25 years of robot development. We have termed the technologies developed as part of this research and their application“Honda Robotics.”

This section introduces ASIMO and Honda Robotics as the result of this remarkable program of research and development at Honda along with some thoughts from an engineer who has been involved in robot research at the company.