Honda, Toyota see robots in their futures

TOKYO — Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are locked in an intense race to build ever more sophisticated and practical ... robots.

In 2000, Honda blazed the trail with Asimo, a waist-high, bubbleheaded, bipedal humanoid robot. Asimo's latest accomplishment: serving guests green tea.

Toyota parried with a host of "partner robots," including an ensemble of mechanical maestros that can play the violin, trumpet, tuba and drums.

Detractors call these expensive efforts a diversion from mainstream business. Robots may help build a company's engineering credentials, thus aiding recruiting efforts at universities, but the gee-whiz technology does little to benefit core automotive operations, they say.

Honda and Toyota engineers disagree. As modern cars get more complex, they say, robot technology will become more prominent in vehicle engineering and design.

The worlds of cars and robots are quickly overlapping, Honda and Toyota engineers say. For example, much of the technology that makes robots "autonomous" also is used in pre-crash safety features, lane-keeping guides, parking assist, adaptive cruise control, and drive-by-wire and vehicle stability systems.

Engineering better robots, the reasoning goes, will help improve cars.

"There is simultaneous development going on from both the robot and the automobile sides," says Toyota's robot chief, Masaru Ogino. "We are moving from theory into practice."

Honda founded its robot program in the 1980s with the goal of creating cars that can drive themselves. To fire creativity, team members were originally ordered to build "Astro Boy," a fictional flying robot of Japanese comic book lore.

"I thought they were crazy," recalls Masato Hirose, who now heads Honda's robot unit.

Likewise, Toyota also sees robots as an exercise in futuristic engineering.

In December, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe unveiled the violin-playing robot and a robotic wheelchair. He said helper robots would be a core business in the 2020s.

Toyota's partner robots are seen morphing into tour guides, medical assistants and household helpers. They even will work on factory floors. Toyota plans to begin real-life trials of the helper robots this year, to test how well they interact with humans.

So far there has been little if any direct crossover from robots to cars at either Honda or Toyota. But both say the potential for synergies is huge.

For example, to stroke the bow just right, Toyota's violin robot has advanced pressure and movement sensors in its arms.

Toyota sees that technology as key to the future of drive-by-wire cars, where computers translate pressure and movement from the driver's hand into electronic impulses.

Toyota's wheelchair robot is dubbed Mobiro for "mobility robot." It can pilot itself using sensors to steer clear of obstacles and has a system keeping the seat level at all times, even over uneven terrain.

Such sensor technology forms the foundations of pre-crash safety systems being developed for vehicles. The level-seat function parallels stability and slip control in cars.

Honda's Asimo uses an arsenal of visual, laser, infrared and ultrasonic sensors to walk and run on two legs and navigate around moving obstructions.

Voice and face recognition software used in robots also can be used to assess whether a driver is falling asleep at the wheel or inebriated, enhancing auto safety.

Another shared application is the actuator technology used in robots. It is usually compact and able to run on low power, traits that increasingly will be demanded in auto parts.

The miniature motors used in robot joints also are ideally sized for tight-quarter car parts such as oscillating air-conditioning vents, engineers say.

Yet technology transfers are limited.

"The working environments of robots and cars are very different," says Masashi Yamashita, general manager of robot design at Toyota.

"Cars operate at much higher speeds and deal with much greater distances. That's quite different from slow-paced robots working in limited areas."

Thus, a navigation sensor on a robot cannot be directly installed on a car. The principle is the same, but the demands are not. The supplier base for robot and car parts also is different.

For the time being, humanoid robots are halo programs at both companies. Toyota has more than a dozen robot models but has yet to sell one.

Neither automaker discloses its robot r&d budget. But engineers say it is minuscule compared with auto development, another reason that any robot-to-auto crossover may be slow.

Still, Toyota and Honda are increasing their robot efforts.

For instance, Toyota is concentrating its robot r&d at its factory in Hirose, west of Tokyo. The automaker has about 100 engineers on its robot team but aims to double that in the next three years.