Honda's Avatar Robot and an extraordinarily dexterous new multi-fingered hand — both demonstrated at Humanoids Summit 2026 in May and highlighted in a widely-shared analysis published August 13 — suggest that the company never really left humanoid robotics after retiring ASIMO from public view.
From ASIMO to Avatar
Rather than releasing a like-for-like ASIMO successor, Honda has migrated decades of bipedal-robotics expertise into a teleoperated platform: the Avatar Robot is conceived as a physical extension of a human operator, ready for hazardous environments and remote maintenance where autonomous humanoids are still unreliable. Engineers who worked on ASIMO — Honda's bipedal program dating back to 1986 — have carried that IP directly into the new work.
A hand that can thread a needle — and lift 5 kilograms
The manipulation story is where Honda's news lands hardest. Its new human-scale multi-fingered hand packs 16 actuated joints with maximum continuous joint speeds of 180 degrees per second, up to 50 N of continuous fingertip force, six-axis fingertip force sensors, and 288 tactile-sensor channels across the fingers and palm. Honda has run more than 450,000 durability-test cycles, including 24,000 cycles lifting a 5 kg weight. The company claims the hand can "work like a human," from threading a needle and using scissors to tightening screws.
Different strategy for a crowded field
The rest of the humanoid industry is racing toward general-purpose autonomous machines. Honda is separating the problem into pieces that can become useful on their own. A dexterous hand that meets real-world reliability standards could underpin Honda's own manufacturing automation and be licensed to third-party integrators long before a fully autonomous humanoid is deployable. That measured pace makes for a striking contrast with the frenzy captured in our recent coverage of LG's NVIDIA Isaac GR00T humanoid MoU and the Unitree Shanghai IPO oversubscription.
Grasping is the new walking
Roy Belak, SVP of robotic grasping at Locus Robotics, framed the moment: "Honda's recent work reflects broader interest in advancing robotic grasping — from a company with one of the most storied histories in humanoid development. The hurdle is moving from lab demos to scalable real-world deployments, which depends on reliability, repeatability and quality." Honda's positioning suggests the company understands that message, too.
Reporting based on coverage from Robotics & Automation News, Japan Today, eWeek and Honda R&D.