July 4, 2006 – ASIMO, Honda’s advanced humanoid robot, returns to the SMMT Industry Forum’s Youth Engineering Summit in Birmingham to help raise interest in engineering amongst the regions school children. This is ASIMO’s second visit to the annual event and builds on a highly successful debut appearance last year. The summit runs for three days (4th to the 6th July) and more than 1500 youngsters and their teachers are expected to attend.
Youth Engineering Summit 2006
During each performance ASIMO will highlight the importance of engineering and science to society and offer encouragement to the year 8 and 9 students to play an active role in shaping the future of the industry.
At last year’s event 49% of the students, who had not considered a career in engineering before the event, had changed their minds after seeing the show.
Honda is committed to social activity with a philosophy to “foster a spirited and dynamic people and society for the next generation.” Towards this goal, Honda implements various social activities which are designed to communicate to young people the importance and joy of having dreams, taking on new challenges, and creating things. This includes promoting the utilization of ASIMO in programs designed for young students. Through these activities, Honda will continue contributing to the effort to communicate how science and technology can help make people’s dreams come true and to raise interest in and deepen the understanding of science and engineering among young students.
ASIMO is the latest example of Honda’s extensive research into the field of humanoid robotics which stretches back to 1986. In December 2005, Honda debuted a new version of the humanoid robot featuring a number of enhanced abilities allowing ASIMO to act in harmony with people, perform a series of everyday tasks and run at a speed of 6km/hour.
William De Braekeleer, Corporate PR Manager of Honda Motor Europe said: “The annual Youth Engineering Summit is a great opportunity to show to young people the exciting challenges they could face through a career in science and engineering. ASIMO demonstrates the diverse and revolutionary projects children could become involved in and I hope more young children are inspired to realize that science and engineering can be fun.”