History of Honda Robots: ASIMO project to E0

Since the Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921 coined the term 'robot' in his play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots), the evolution of the androids, their usefulness and the place would fill a medium-term future has led to inflamed discussions and has held thousands of pages in numerous books and essays on science fiction.

Almost all the works bet because robots would become part of our lives in a relatively short period of time and were almost done that in the early twenty-first century could be used to perform the toughest jobs and complicated but also for other more how to perform everyday shopping or walking the dog. Unfortunately, their estimates have run into the harsh reality: the evolution of robots is still very slow and costly.

If there is a company that has invested in the development and improvement of the technology needed to create androids has been Honda. Today we all know the ASIMO, a humanoid robot can run, climb stairs, recognize faces of their owners and even perform some simple task, but it should be remembered that this is the fruit of two decades of research that had their beginning in 1986.

It was in that year that Honda created the E0, a very rudimentary prototype biped 5 seconds needed to complete one step and that it lacked the human aspect of that is showing ASIMO, but that was the basis on which cemented further developments.

Searching on the net I just found a video containing images of this model. The lighting is very poor and poor image quality, but gives you an idea of what the E0:
The next generation of robots was formed by the models E1, E2 and E3, developed between 1987 and 1991. This is the aspect that had these three models:
The E1 was able to walk at 0.25 km / h, leading to discern a certain distinction of movement between both legs. Meanwhile, in E2 the Japanese manufacturer was one step further by creating the first model that simulated more or less realistic human walking, although he could only reach 1.2 km / h. This was achieved with the E3, aesthetic improvements that besides making it more pleasing to the eye, I could walk at 3 km / h, the same speed that we develop when we walk.