More seething envy from the PC crowd.

No matter how much of other people's money they pour into the problem, the basic nature of people cannot be changed.

Science and everything else important and good will continue to be developed almost entirely by those straight white Christian males they hate so very much.

Anybots didn't release any information about what they are doing, but based on the video it is clear that they are doing feedback control. I have no idea why it is so wobbly other than the fact that pneumatic actuators are notoriously hard to model and control and thus some kind of overshoot in the controller is to be expected.

ASIMO and every other successful walking robot has to use feedback control for balancing. Open-loop robots will definitely fall down after only a few steps because unmodeled errors build up quickly.

Honda also did not release all the details of their controller, but they do have a few technical papers in robotics conferences. When ASIMO and other ZMP-based humanoids walk, they use a precomputed "walking pattern" as a reference. The pattern specifies the desired location of the ZMP over time.

There is some limited high-level technical info here:

    http://asimo.honda.com/

    http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/technology/walking_02 .html

As the robot walks, the six-axis force/torque sensors in the feet and the gyroscope will allow the robot to estimate the actual ZMP position. The controller will then modify the robot's posture in order to compensate for any errors between the actual and desired ZMP locations. If the controller can keep the error within some reasonable bounds, the trajectory will be dynamically stable and ther robot will not fall down.

By the way, when ASIMO is standing still and the controller is running, if you push on its shoulders or torso, it will resist you. The feedback controller will try to keep the ZMP within the center of the base of support. It moves very smoothly.

Hope this helps to clarify.
-James

Listen up kids

Listen up, kids

"owned", "pwned", "h4x0red", "l33t",

"owned", "pwned", "h4x0red", and "l33t" [no comma]

was interesting for about 5 minutes 5 years ago,

were interesting for about five minutes five years ago;

Stop using them, it's pathetically annoying.

Stop using them; it's pathetically annoying.

Try using some proper English for once.

Yes.