Developed by Honda, it is part of a 17 year project on developing a humanoid robot. Capable of advanced maneuvers that simulate human walking, it can independently climb stairs.[5] With 26 degrees of freedom, hip, knee, and foot joints, and a gyroscopic sensor, it the closest commercial robot to a human. It is four feet high, and is designed to as a helper robot, which is the right height to look a wheelchaired person right in the eye. It even contains a built in processor that can recognize spoken commands, and even identify human faces.

Asimo can do simple assisting tasks such as turning on the lights, opening doors, carrying groceries, or pushing carts. Being capable of programmed gestures, and verbal response, it's been purchased by companies like IBM as a receptionist for the corporate headquarters. With it's 26 moving parts, it currently is limited to 30 minutes per charge, which takes four hours to recharge. [5]

Although Asimo is technically superior to anything on the market it is extremely expensive and not very practical.  Most people cannot afford a multi-million dollar robot that although is impressive, is little more than a protptype.  For this reason, the Asimo is not a very good household robot.

Photo of Asimo from: http://asimo.honda.com/index.asp?bhcp=1