Improved Honda Asimo Pretends to be a Bartender and Pour Drinks

Honda Asimo, the frighteningly realistic yet increasingly useless humanoid robot, has learned another new trick! It can pour drinks. Watch Asimo roll out a cart, open up a thermos, grab the cup, tilt the cup, pour,finish the pour and hand it off to a pretty lady.

It's amazing how human-like this guy is now. Honda has improved Asimo from its stair climbing days to now be able to understand different voices, recognize faces and respond to movement around it. Most importantly, Asimo can move on its own (it no longer needs an operator). Honda says that Asimo's intelligence and abilities have been upgraded tenfold, its top speed is 2mph faster at 5.6 mph and its new dexterous fingers can be even used for sign language. All this sounds awesome but if we can add an Asimo to every bar, I'd totally be down with that. 

[Via: Gizmodo & Reghardware]

Alien-Looking Automatons Have Taken Over Heathrow Airport

These happy-looking automatons are currently jetting passengers around Heathrow airport without any supervision at a 25 mph clip. Man, when did the future happen? I totally missed it.

Created by BAA, these Ultra PRTs whiz around Heathrow's business parking lots independent of human intervention and have yet to experience what we call "an accident." Breakdowns are also extremely rare and the system has a 95% reliability rate.

And lest you think this is some PR stunt, the system has been fully operational since April. The diesel buses (and presumably their human drivers) were retired at that time, and the Ultra PRTs have been transporting people with their four-seat configurations since then. The pods are on-demand as well, so unlike the buses they are not making a constant loop from terminal to parking lot looking for passengers. 

  [Via: Gizmodo  & NYT]