ASIMO turns 9 years old on Halloween - and Haunted House animatronics

 Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO is turning 9 this weekend on Oct. 31. I found out from Moriyama-san's blog that Honda is having a birthday party for him in Tokyo that day.

 To honor this event, ASIMO big fan Dian is becoming ASIMO for Halloween. His dad Roy made the costume. The treats go into the battery pack and Dian has even mastered the ASIMO walk from watching all the YouTube videos. He doesn't like to see this one though, because it makes him feel "sad." DASIMO and ASIMO are alike in a way that they both have "some mobility issues" according to Dian's mom. 

 

   Talking about Halloween, Roy, who is an engineer at a large semiconductor equipment firm, LOVES to build robots and each year he and his colleague Allen get together to build robots for the Haunted House at McKinley Elementary School as part of a fund raising event.

  The robots move using electric motors and/or pneumatics and they were really impressive (ie scary). Here are some photos from this year's robots. I'm going to leave them as thumbnails so that only those who have a stomach for zombies can go ahead and click on them.  

 Below is the control system for the Haunted House robots. The operator monitors the people coming into the rooms and then hits the appropriate button at the right timing to move each of the robots.

 Thanks Roy and Allen!