Watch Honda's Updated Humanoid Robot Run and Serve Drinks

It's faster, more fluid with its motion and can navigate even rough terrain with human-like ease. It's hard to believe that this robot, which looks like a miniature astronaut, isn't just a person inside a robot-like suit.

Honda new and improved Asimo also is the world's first robot with autonomous behavior control technology, meaning it doesn't need an operator.

Watch Asimo job across the stage here:

Or how about Asimo in its new role as bartender:

According to Honda, the following factors went into making Asimo an autonomous machine:

1) high-level postural balancing capability which enables the robot to maintain its posture by putting out its leg in an instant, 2) external recognition capability which enables the robot to integrate information, such as movements of people around it, from multiple sensors and estimate the changes that are taking place, and 3) the capability to generate autonomous behavior which enables the robot to make predictions from gathered information and autonomously determine the next behavior without being controlled by an operator.

Asimo weighs just over 105 pounds and can run at 5.6 miles per hour -- the previous model could only reach a top speed of 3.7 mph.

Here's an example of Asimo from back in 2006, when it had difficulty on stairs:

[H/T Gizmodo]