Atlas record: https://www.aitimeline.dev/en/events/evt-0200/
Availability · November 20, 2000
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.
Event record
- Event date
- November 20, 2000
- Timeline date
- Event date
- Verification
- Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026
- Lines
- ID
- evt-0200
Honda announced ASIMO and demonstrated it in Tokyo on 20 November 2000 (Honda's news release of that day). 31 October 2000 is, according to Honda, the day the robot first walked successfully on two legs inside its research centre, not the public presentation.
Related events
Earlier
- Enables Honda P2: the first humanoid with its own battery 1996links to this record
Honda's page says outright that P2 led to the birth of ASIMO four years later; ASIMO is the eleventh prototype of the same line with the same stability control.
- Related Subsumption architecture 1986
The motion is built on precise trajectory planning rather than reactive layers of behaviour.