On Sept. 11, the U.S. Patent Office stamped 'n' filed Honda's submittal of a new "Mobile Robot" — one all-too familiar to the rest of us. ASIMO's been around a while, of course, so the devil is in the details. Here, the specifics come down to how the cute little fella communicates with nearby humans: a brain in a base station and a complex system of perception, voice synthesis and gesticulation.
Among the many components described are a "personal identification unit," a "conversation controller," and units that detect the motion, direction, speed and position of itself and nearby friends/targets. ASIMO's surrounding are divided into a pie-chart of eight dynamic regions, which can be individually searched and scanned for relevant phenomena.
The patent is full of intriguing flow-charts describing how ASIMO
perceives, thinks and gets on with things, including voice-activated requests to move stuff, arrange items on desks, greet people
("PRE-MOTION OF GREETING > GREETING MOTION > MULTILINGUAL VOICE
SYNTHESIS > GREETING UTTERANCE"), deliver messages, and differentiate between people who should be met casually ("HELLO, MR.
X!") or formally ("OHAYO GOZAIMASU, MR. PRESIDENT") and so on.
U.S. Patent 7,269,480 (PDF)
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