These new areas include an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, avatar robot with a goal to expand the range of human ability and a new challenge in the field of outer space. According to Keiji Ohtsu, President and Representative Director of Honda R&D Co., Ltd, “All of the initiatives we introduced today are for the challenges Honda takes on in new areas, but the underlying passion of Honda to use our technology to make people’s lives more enjoyable remains unchanged. Ever since the company’s founding, the wellspring of Honda’s challenges has always been the people at Honda who generate original technologies and ideas. Through the creation of new mobility, Honda will continue striving to change the value people place on mobility and make positive changes to our society.” Honda Motor Co. says this will make mobility in he skies more accessible for people. Honda eVTOL leverages Honda’s electrification technologies for its gas turbine hybrid power unit to provide inter-city (city-to-city) transportation, where the market size is expected to grow in the future. Honda will create a new “mobility ecosystem” featuring Honda eVTOL at its core, connected with mobility products on the ground or work with its original HondaJet to increase accessibility. Honda will strive to create new value for people by establishing a “mobility ecosystem” featuring eVTOL aircraft at its core, coordinated and integrated with mobility on the ground. With a view to putting the Honda Avatar Robot into practical use in the 2030s, Honda is pursuing development with a goal to conduct technology demonstration testing before the end of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. The greatest merit of an avatar robot, which can act as a second self of the user, is that the user can perform tasks and experience things without being there in person, including the realistic sense of handling objects remotely. What will become the core of the realization of such an avatar robot is the multi-fingered robotic hand developed while leveraging Honda’ strengths in robotics technologies and Honda’s original AI-supported remote control function. To date, Honda has realized a multi-fingered hand with the ability to both delicately pick up a small object with the fingertips and the strength to open a tight jar lid, at the level of the human hand. This has long been a challenge in the field of robotics research. Honda is working on the further advancement of its original AI-supported remote control function to allow the multi-fingered hand to grasp objects smoothly and precisesly. Honda is accelerating its research and development in the field of space technologies while building a circulative renewable energy system on the lunar surface by leveraging Honda fuel cell technologies and high differential pressure water electrolysis technologies. Applying Honda’s multi-fingered robotic hand, AI-supported remote control function, and highly-responsive torque control technologies to remotely-controlled robots which will perform tasks on the lunar surface. Honda is also working on a small, reusable rocket to create new value in the ultimate environment of outer space. Moreover, for the remotely-controlled robots on the lunar surface, which can minimize the risks astronauts will be exposed to and enable people to virtually enjoy the experience of being on the Moon from Earth, via technologies such as its multi-fingered robotic hand technology and AI-supported remote control technology being developed for the Honda Avatar Robot and the highly-responsive torque control technology for collision mitigation.
