The ASIMO has come a long way from the days it made breakthroughs in bi-pedal robotic locomotion. I can remember seeing the demonstration for the first time and thinking "Wow!", having a good idea about what all is involved in sensing center of mass, computing necessary data to compensate and then executing those results in order to balance all within a matter of milliseconds. This would later lead to devices such as the self-balancing Segway. Now with the latest strides in artificial intelligence, bi-pedal locomotion seems like child's play.

"One of the great paradoxes that has been thrown up in research into robots is this: Robots and computers are very very good at things we find very difficult such as long division and '..' returns, but they're very very bad at things we find extremely easy and instinctive such as walking, talking and seeing."