ASIMO
Honda presented a humanoid that walked on two legs with a natural gait, climbed stairs and recovered balance after a push.
Why it matters
Bipedal walking, worked at since 1973, finally looked effortless, and that became the public face of robotics for a decade.
Development ran secretly from 1986; ASIMO was the eleventh prototype in the line. Walking rested on computing the trajectory of the centre of mass precisely in real time. The machine had no autonomy in the modern sense: demonstrations were largely scripted in advance or operator-driven. Honda ended the programme in 2018.