Honda is coming out with a new version of their ASIMO Robot, it looks like an astronaut and is capable of walking with a human like gate at 2.5 mph. When it walks it swings its arms and rotates it's hips. The device is very human like with joints that bend in such a way as to truly remind one of a human.

Not to be outdone Toyota has its own human like robot. These robots were designed with one goal in mind, to be assistants to humans. This brings us even closer to the robot age. The robots are designed to not only be agile, but to be kind to the people that own them.

Now we have a new player in the field and this player says that he has built the most powerful robot ever made and one that will continually learn. The new player is South Korea. The scientists in South Korea have stated that the robot will learn like a human. Can this be? I can't say but they have. They call the robot a humanoid and are proud to say it is the first humanoid in the world. The humanoid robot intelligence is based on an outside server on the internet. If the robot needs more more room to expand its 'intelligence' than the server can be expanded, unlike other existing robots. The robot stands 5 feet high and weighs 147 pounds.

When the robot was asked it's name, it replied that it was sorry but it didn't have a name yet. It recognizes the dominations of paper money and when you leave it waves goodbye. It does lack the mobility of the Honda and Toyota robots though. It can walk but not with the precision of something like ASIMO. It is hoped that the skill of recognizing objects will be improved as it's intelligence expands. This robot could be the opium home and office assistant.

It has been predicted that within 50 years robots will rule the world. It may not be by violent means but we could just become too dependent on them for all our needs and they could become intelligent enough to realize this. It makes me think about an old question, how would you know when a robot, or any machine, became self aware? Where would that point be where the programming ends and the machine starts to think for itself? I don't see how we could ever tell unless we could trick it into doing something that it was specifically programmed not to do and even this might just be a glitch. It is a very tricky question. The reason it is so tricky is that good programming can produce a product that mimics humans so well that it would mask self awareness.