Remember the news about the plans to let Honda’s humanoid robot ASIMO conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra? It looks like he did a good job:

More cool videos can be found at the brand new official Honda YouTube channel. Like this one, where ASIMO Dances at Kennedy Space Center.

Thanks to Lauren Ebner at Honda!

At May 13 Honda’s humanoid robot ASIMO will be conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as it performs “Impossible Dream” to open a special concert performance with renowned cellist Yo-Yo.

Honda hopes ASIMO’s appearance will draw attention to the DSO’s nationally acclaimed youth music programs, and particularly DSO’s effort to encourage and support involvement of children in Detroit.

In addition, ASIMO will demonstrate its unique capabilities for hundreds of area school children at 10:45 a.m., May 14, prior to a specially arranged master class at the DSO, where a select group of music students will receive personal music instruction from Yo-Yo Ma. Students from the Detroit School of Arts (DSA) will participate in the master class on-stage in front of the audience of area children, which will include a group of young students from neighboring Windsor, Canada.

Read more about the event in the official press release from Honda.

(Via Prylfeber)

Pirkus-R Type-01 DX, from the Japanese Robot Labs company, is a new humanoid with quite an amazing face recognition feature.

Pirkus is capable of remembering people he meets and can later on point these faces out in a large crowd.

The humanoid is 30 cm (11.8 inches) high, weighs one kilo (2.2 pounds) and can be controlled via Bluetooth compatible computers or cell phones. It can also shoot and send pictures with its built-in camera.

But the Pirkus-R Type-01 DX isn’t cheep, it will set you back over $2,250.

(Tech.co.uk via Prylfeber)

Video footage of i-SOBOT, the world’s smallest mass produced humanoid robot, in a no holds barred battle up against Godzilla:

While many celebrate the triumphant arrival of Takara/Tomy’s tiny humanoid robot upon American shores, a disturbing development comes with it. All across the USA, i-SOBOT fight clubs have been forming. These clubs have only one dark purpose; to pit hapless i-SOBOT robots against wild, primitive and aggressive creatures in caged death matches where the audience wagers on who will live and who will die! RobotsRule managed to get live video of one of those matches and several tragic photos too.

Check out i-SOBOT Fight Club: The Shocking Truth! for more pics and info.

Thanks to Robert Oschler at Robots Rule!

This official Tomy/Takara i-SOBOT video shows the tiny talented humanoid robot doing flips, talking, and gives a brief overview of several of its features:

In other i-SOBOT news the official i-SOBOT web site now has some of the Japanese web pages up; still waiting on the English language pages. Also, Amazon has changed their quoted expected delivery date for preorders from October 22 to October 10 to 24. This may be a sign that the robot will ship earlier than previously expected.

Thanks to Robert Oschler, Pleo Dinosaur and Robots Dreams.

The SPC-101C humanoid robot from the Japanese Speecys company is 40 cm (15.7 inches) tall and comes with a “face-recognizing” feature.

It can walk, talk, check your emails, and laugh – as you can see in this video:

SPC-101C is currently priced around $3,000 USD (yes, with three zeros).

(Robot Dreams via Prylfeber)