On November 8th, 2011, Honda unveiled what would become the last major update to Asimo. Asimo(2011) has an increased max running speed of 9 km/h due to strengthened legs, expanded range of movement, and new control technology. The other major innovation of Asimo(2011) is the new hands that have 13 DoF each. This was accomplished by using hydraulic actuators. Each finger has a force sensor in addition to the palm force sensor. Asimo(2011)’s weight decreased to 48 kg. Asimo(2011) has the ability to recognize the voices of multiple people speaking simultaneously, and can predict the direction of person walking to avoid collision. For the first time, Asimo is able to run backwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmglbk_Op64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjlFRfhP_U
Dynamic Gait Transition between Walking, Running and Hopping for Push Recovery published in 2017 gave an amazing look under Asimo(2011)’s plastic shell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UevFtYEimjw
To power all 26 hydraulic hand DoF’s, a master cylinder located in the torso drove each one-to-one. Each master cylinder was actuated by a ball screw and an electric motor. Due to the remote actuation, the hand only weighs 0.38 kg and was capable of grasping 1.8 kg.
Custom six-axis force sensors were mounted at the fingertips for all fingers on each hand. A dedicated leg control CPU was added, allowing for the communication bus to be speed up by a factor of four to a cycle time of 250 µs while the number of DoF’s was increased to 57.