Rumours: Honda NSX returns

Avengers movie car previews new supercar. It’ll get new V6 engine with twin electric motors

By Peter Lyon

The legendary Honda NSX supercar is back. These spy shots, taken on the set of the new Avengers movie, show a new Acura-badged Audi R8-sized supercar that previews a successor to the NSX.
Acura is Honda’s US-only luxury brand and the sports car was spotted in Central Park, New York, with actor Robert Downey Jr at the wheel. Its appearance is hugely significant for fans keen to see Honda return to the supercar arena.
Honda CEO Takanobu Ito recently hinted at the NSX’s revival, when he revealed: “We’re making progress with plans for an exotic sports car.” And six months ago, Ito said Honda was keen to relaunch a high-performance sports car like the NSX.
A Honda source told us that the Dual Note 4WD hybrid concept from the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show was our first glimpse at the technology that will underpin the NSX. It used a 3.5-litre V6 to drive the rear wheels and in-wheel electric motors to turn the fronts, generating over 400bhp.
Ten years later, Honda is still perfecting the technology. A source said: “Honda wants to build a supercar that breaks the mould while creating a new technological package.”
Honda is working on a VTEC V6 engine of between 3.5 to 3.7 litres, while the twin electric motor set-up will be powered by lithium-ion batteries and employ a plug-in recharge system for a small electric-only range. The result will be huge amounts of torque, but also the high-revving character Hondas are famous for.
The car will also have a weight-saving aluminium body, and is set to go sale by 2014, priced at a Nissan GT-R-rivalling £65,000.
Source;

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/273565/honda_nsx_returns.html#ixzz1a0bFcanO

Ford F150 Badly Damaged Driving Off Debris On 3 Wheels.

Wow....


Source;
http://jalopnik.com/5845835/watch-a-heavily-damaged-ford-truck-remove-itself-from-hurricane-wreckage

2012 VW Passat 3.6 vs. 2011 Honda Accord V6, 2012 Hyundai Sonata 2.0T - Comparison Tests

Middle Class Acts: Can VW's Passat satisfy the mainstream without pandering to it? We bring along two 10Besters to find out.
BY MICHAEL AUSTIN, PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN ROE August 2011

Volkswagen has big plans for the United States. Big, as in 800,000-sales-by-2018 big, which is more than three times what it sold here in 2010. First came the Jetta, price-cut for the American market, universally unloved in the C/D office, and selling like hotcakes to the car-buying public. The new Passat takes the Jetta approach a step further, not just reconstituted for our bland, ketchup-loving palates but specifically built for and in America.

VW set pricing low, at a suggested $20,765 to start, $7180 less than the 2010 Passat. But we’re hardly interested in the Walmart model, with its anemic 2.5-liter inline-five making a meager 170 horsepower. And the Passat TDI, as the only affordable mid-size diesel on the market, is quite literally in a class of one. That leaves the Passat 3.6, fitted with a 280-hp, single-head narrow-vee six-cylinder and a six-speed dual-clutch transmission.

The powertrain is pure VW, the perfect foil for determining whether the rest of the car is true to the brand that brought us the GTI. A Passat 3.6 in SE trim starts at $29,765. Our particular car, a $33,720 as-tested SEL model, includes amenities such as keyless ignition, remote start, leather seats, a 6.5-inch navigation screen, power passenger seat, wood inlays, and extra chrome interior trim.

Whether the Passat is a worthy VW may be something only a die-hard few care about; how it compares with the competition is much more significant. So we invited comparable versions of the two family sedans on the Car and Driver 10Best list: the Honda Accord and the Hyundai Sonata. In EX-L V-6 form with a $2200 navigation option, the $32,600 Accord checks every factory-equipped option box.

The Sonata, introduced last year as a 2011 model, is similarly loaded in 2.0T Limited guise, albeit with the lowest price in the group, at $31,285. Running changes for 2012 Sonatas include a panoramic sunroof; a bigger, seven-inch touch screen; and a 1-mpg bump in EPA highway fuel economy to a best-in-test 34.

If the Passat can hold its own against two of the best in the family-car segment, it stands to reason that Volkswagen’s ambitions could be realistic. There’s only one way to find out.


2012 Hyundai Sonata 2.0T Limited - Comparison Tests
Third Place: Middle Class Acts

Highs: Good value, attractive inside and out, buttoned-down chassis.
Lows: Compromised rear seat, disconnected steering, droning engine note.
The Verdict: A worthy effort in need of some polish.

Full write up on Sonata;
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparisons/11q3/2012_vw_passat_3.6_vs._2011_honda_accord_v6_2012_hyundai_sonata_2.0t-comparison_tests/2012_hyundai_sonata_2.0t_limited_page_2

2011 Honda Accord EX-L V6 - Comparison Tests
Second Place: Middle Class Acts

Highs: Well-tuned suspension, natural driving position, comfortable rear seat.
Lows: Interior is plagued with buttons, excessive front-seat lumbar support.
The Verdict: Aging gracefully, but aging nonetheless.

For the full write up on the Accord;
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparisons/11q3/2012_vw_passat_3.6_vs._2011_honda_accord_v6_2012_hyundai_sonata_2.0t-comparison_tests/2011_honda_accord_ex-l_v6_page_3

2012 Volkswagen Passat 3.6 SEL - Comparison Tests
First Place: Middle Class Acts

Highs: Cushy ride, smooth engine and transmission, high-class interior.
Lows: Lots of body roll, non-centered steering wheel, full-time stability control.
The Verdict: VW aims wide and hits the mark

For the rest of the Passat write up;
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparisons/11q3/2012_vw_passat_3.6_vs._2011_honda_accord_v6_2012_hyundai_sonata_2.0t-comparison_tests/2012_volkswagen_passat_3.6_sel_page_4

2012 Honda Pilot: The Tech-Speak Is A Real Treat

Somewhere around middle school (junior high, middle form or whatever your system calls it), if you are taking part or have taken part in any English literature class, you've probably run across the writer George Orwell and his surprising novel 1984 – written in the 1930s as a prediction of future life; a mix of science fantasy and fiction – where one of the author's favorite terms was tech-speak.

Put simply, it's Orwell's way – or his character's anyway – of saying that if you say something long and enough and loud enough and make it technical enough, people will believe it as a matter of course. It's not a hard concept to grasp and, truth to tell, it looks like some of the best practitioners of tech-speak right now are the PR guys at Honda.

Here's an example, right from their website! In describing the new Honda Pilot and its restyled front end (last year it took its styling cues from its upscale sibling Acura and made the Pilot perhaps the worst-looking SUV on the road – the front end was practically all brushed aluminum and it looked as if the Pilot had a weird, silly smile on its front end all the time. The smile was so silly, in fact, that many of us in the car world wondered if the Pilot had escaped its keepers and its meds when it was released. The 2011 Pilot had perhaps the lousiest front-end we've seen on an SUV in a long, long time; time that stretches back to the original Ford Bronco II and Jeep Grand Cherokee, neither of which set any any styling watersheds in the 1970s when they were introduced), the PR guys described it as a “sleek new grille for more upscale appearance.”

To translate the tech-speak, here it simply says that if the design team valued its continued employment they had better not only cook up a new front end (which they did and which turns what could have been quite the worse-looking SUV on the market into a real winner) and the PR guys picked up n the new front-end styling, which saved myriad jobs, and came out with that “sleek new … appearance” stuff.

To be sure, the 2012 Pilot is head and shoulder better looking that its predecessor. The design team actually had a chance to meet in one integrated conference room, apparently, instead of sitting in two or three or more competing shops, trying to find just the right lines to improve what had to be the drunken dreams of some designer (or maybe some other recreational pharmaceutical, who knows and who cares? The new styling is absolutely flawless.)

Here's what we mean – and no we're talking about the usual bunch of modern electronic goodies like streaming audio (true statement from expert author – author is also radio enthusiast and hobbyist with 30 years of experience on bandwidth and other radio issues and can speak with authority on this – wait until several Pilots are caught in the same traffic jam and then wait until they try to start streaming video from the same wireless Internet node – usually a cell tower – via 3/4G technology or WiFi;

(The result will be bunch of unhappy campers whose right to stream is being severely abridged by the people in the Pilot next door – no Congress can't do anything about it and neither can applications of technology. Technically, there is only so much bandwidth available for all devices on a frequency and there are only so many shared frequencies (there is a rather long and involved quadratic equation that will prove that the amount of bandwidth used is proportional to the amount demanded that will show this to be a true situation) available.

(The normal answer of the users would be to give them all the bandwidth at the expense of services that are already there – whether public safety, fixed, mobile or aeronautical mobile – so the demand for all bandwidth available is unlikely to occur. The result then will be unhappy kids in the back who are all complaining about buffering and slowdowns and dropouts. Really, there's nothing at all you can do about this, so you'll have to live with it. This is really a topic for another day, it's really about how tech-speak and real-speak have become accepted and have come together to produce a Honda Pilot.)

For example, where last year's Honda Pilot looked like the nightmare on Brushed Chrome street, this year's grille looks fantastic. Yes, there's still a portion of the grille that is chromed, but the bars are rather thin and the blacked-out grille in between looks just right. Indeed, the design team fared the headlight module, fenders and hood into an organic shape that seems to naturally sweep up from the valance below the bumper, through the grille and on through the narrowed, but sloping hood. The fenders are flared and work well with the overall front end design so that the Pilot now comes standard with 18-inch tires and wheels. The body is also subtly flared as it moves from a relatively wide A-pillar through the passenger section of the cabin to the nicely finished rear end.

This year, though, instead of just relying on the Odyssey as the eight-passenger vehicle, the Pilot offers an EX-L model with a third row of seats that disappears into the floor (ala the Odyssey) for carrying capacity.

Like all Hondas, the 3.5-liter V-6 iVTEC engine is at the cutting edge of technology delivering and average of 22 mpg city/highway. The engine, by the way, is one of the most flexible powerplants we have driven in a while. It will lug right down there in the lower gears of the five-speed automatic and the move out flawlessly when it comes time. The 250-horsepower/253-foot-pound of torque engine has a nice even – and flawlessly broad – powerband that enables the five-speed automatic to make the best use of the speed and power available.

Like all Honda Pilots – except the low-end LX – you have your choice of front-drive or SUV and most people choose the SUV model with its advanced traction control system and – now mandated – electronic stability system. This means you will be able to get through in conditions that would have other all-wheel-drive system slowly – or rapidly – spinning all four tires as they strive for traction. The Pilot uses an intelligent traction system that shifts power rapidly from the wheels losing traction to those with traction and brakes slightly at the same time time for control.

We found on a very wet highway recently that this is a nice feature. We also found that there are many features you can certainly live without, although they are offered in upper-end models such as Bluetooth device integration and real-time satellite display that you can easily do without. Well, maybe not the nav display as it doubles as the climate control and radio control interface, so you'd probably better order yours with the system and if you have kids the rear entertainment system is almost mandatory.

As you can tell, we liked the Honda, despite its now nearly $40,000 regular price. You'll probably lease yours for 48 months which isn't a bad idea, either.

However you choose to view it, it's time that tech-speak and real-speak come together as the “sleek new grille for ...” simply means a nicely designed front end. Actually, the way the PR crowd has put it together, it's rather nicely done.

Source;
http://www.auto-types.com/autonews/honda-the-tech-speak-is-a-real-treat-7858.html

Toyota-Honda U.S. Rebound Brings Call of ‘What Recession?': Cars

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.'s return to full production this month is boosting U.S. auto sales back near the pace reached before Japan's earthquake.

September light-vehicle sales, to be released Oct. 3, probably rose to a 12.8 million seasonally adjusted annual rate, the average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would be the fastest pace since April, when lost output caused by Japan's tsunami crimped supply of parts and finished cars.

“Recovering inventory levels have helped to bring buyers back into the market,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power & Associates.

Jesse Toprak, who develops forecasts at TrueCar.com, went so far as to title his latest report “What Recession?” as the auto rebound defies consumer confidence that is near a two-year low.

Toyota has said it expects to reverse monthly U.S. sales declines beginning next month, and Honda is adding overtime shifts at two Ohio plants. Better supply also probably meant incentives rose from the lowest in almost six years.

“The big story this month was better inventory and favorable pricing” for consumers, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at Santa Monica, California-based Edmunds.com.

Sales declines at Toyota and Honda contributed to the U.S. auto sales pace slowing from a 13.1 million rate averaged in the year's first four months to as low as 11.6 million in June, according to researcher Autodata Corp.

Toyota Still Recovering
Toyota slipped behind Ford Motor Co. to third in U.S. sales this year through August, which was the first month in the past year that its global production increased. The Toyota City, Japan-based automaker is still recovering and may say sales dropped 15 percent, the average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, leaving it in third again.

“With the launch of the new Camry, October should be even better,” said Paul Atkinson, who operates Toyota dealerships in Bryan and Madisonville, Texas. “We're selling as fast as they're coming off the damn truck.”

Toyota, ramping up production of the redesigned Camry sedan, may say sales dropped 15 percent, the average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The Toyota City, Japan- based automaker's global production increased for the first time in 12 months in August.

Toyota shares fell 0.5 percent to 2,688 yen in Tokyo at the 3 p.m. close of Tokyo trading. Nissan Motor Co. gained 0.4 percent, while Honda fell 1.4 percent.

Overtime at Honda
Sales may decline 6.1 percent at Honda, the average of five analysts' estimates, after deliveries slid 20 percent or more in each of the past four months. The Tokyo-based automaker is scheduling overtime shifts at its Marysville and East Liberty assembly plants in Ohio, Ron Lietzke, a spokesman, said in a Sept. 28 phone interview.

Honda began the month with 32 days supply of vehicles, from 28 in August, Westlake Village, California-based J.D. Power said in a Sept. 22 statement. The industry standard is about 60 days.

General Motors Co. and Ford are anticipating that demand will keep increasing as the largest U.S. automakers negotiate labor contracts that boost production and add jobs.

GM, which reached a new four-year contract with the United Auto Workers this month, may report a 19 percent increase in September sales, the average of eight analysts' estimates. The Detroit-based automaker and union said the accord adds or retains 6,400 jobs and reopens an assembly plant in Tennessee.

Ford, Chrysler
Ford has discussed with the UAW adding as many as 10,000 union jobs in the U.S., according to three people familiar with the talks. Some of those workers would assemble Fusion sedans, which are currently made in Mexico, said one of the people who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

Deliveries this month may rise 5.9 percent for Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, the average of eight analysts' estimates.

Sales at Fiat SpA-controlled Chrysler Group LLC, which has extended its UAW contract to Oct. 19, may climb 20 percent, the average of seven analysts' estimates.

GM fell 58 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $20.18 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Ford dropped 33 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $9.67.

Confidence among U.S. consumers stagnated in September near a two-year low as the share of households saying it was difficult to find a job climbed to the highest level in almost three decades. The Conference Board's sentiment index increased by 0.2 to 45.4 from an August reading that was the lowest since April 2009, the New York-based researcher said Sept. 27.

Auto Industry Shrinks
“The economy is stopped dead in its tracks,” George Magliano, a New York-based economist at IHS Automotive, said in a phone interview. “Considering that, the auto business is showing pretty good strength. The industry is hiring, it's producing more and there's pent-up demand.”
GM and Ford will be adding back only a portion of the jobs they shed during the recession that sent auto sales to a 27-year low of 10.4 million in 2009, according to Autodata Corp.

GM had about 49,000 U.S. hourly employees at the end of 2010, a year after its U.S.-backed bankruptcy. That's down from 111,000 such workers at the end of 2005, the company said in a Sept. 28 conference call with analysts.

Last year, about 962,000 U.S. workers were employed making vehicles and parts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. That's down 32 percent from 1.41 million in 2005.

The downsizing of the industry, achieved in part by U.S.- backed bankruptcies for GM and Chrysler, meant cutting production capacity. That prevented U.S. automakers from raising output and offsetting industrywide constraints on inventory after the Japan earthquake and tsunami in March, said Alan Baum, an industry consultant at Baum & Associates.

‘Limited Ability'
GM, Ford and Chrysler “had a fairly limited ability to capitalize because there are a lot fewer auto plants and workers than there were four years ago,” said Baum, who is based in West Bloomfield, Michigan. “You can't just add a shift willy- nilly.”

Nissan, whose better supply of parts has buoyed inventory levels above its Japan-based rivals, may say deliveries climbed 18 percent, the average of five analysts' estimates.

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest automaker, and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp., may combine to sell 20 percent more vehicles than a year earlier, according to the average of three estimates. Both automakers are based in Seoul.

J.D. Power today increased its estimate for the September auto-sales rate to 13 million from 12.9 million.

Industrywide deliveries may rise to 12.7 million cars and light trucks this year, the average of 18 analysts' estimates surveyed by Bloomberg in August. Sales may climb to 13.6 million in 2012, the average of 15 estimates. The U.S. averaged annual sales of 16.8 million vehicles from 2000 to 2007, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Autodata.

The following table shows estimates for car and light-truck sales in the U.S. Estimates for companies are a percentage change from September 2010. Forecasts for the seasonally adjusted annual rate, or SAAR, are in millions of light vehicles.

September had 25 selling days, matching the year-earlier period.*T

GM Ford Chrysler SAAR
Himanshu Patel NA NA NA 12.8
(JPMorgan)
Rod Lache 21% 8.5% 22% 13.0
(Deutsche Bank)
Chris Ceraso 14% 4% 16% 12.6
(Credit Suisse)
Brian Johnson 17% 7% 25% 12.8
(Barclays)
Peter Nesvold 24% 1.6% NA 12.7
(Jefferies)
Patrick Archambault 15% -1.3% 13% 12.4
(Goldman Sachs)
Itay Michaeli NA NA NA 12.9
(Citigroup)
Adam Jonas NA NA NA 12.8
(Morgan Stanley)
George Magliano NA NA NA 12.4
(IHS Automotive)
Jeff Schuster NA NA NA 13.0
(J.D. Power)
Jessica Caldwell 19% 11% 23% 12.9
(Edmunds.com)
Jesse Toprak 21% 8.5% 20% 13.1
(TrueCar.com)
Alan Baum NA NA NA 12.8
(Baum & Associates)
Seth Weber 21% 8% 24% 12.8
(RBC)
Average 19% 5.9% 20% 12.8
*T
--Editors: Bill Koenig, Jamie Butters

Source;
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LS9L3G1A1I4H01-31KL3EA80KPOTH5QSRJ96RFGAM

Honda to bring diesel engined cars to India: Official Word Emerges!

Sure would be nice to see a Diesel from Honda come to North America....
Honda SIEL seems to be on a resurgence of sorts. First we had superb product repositioning strategies with the Honda City Sedan and Honda Jazz Hatchback seeing big price drops on account of what Honda would like us to believe, increased localization which has led to massive cost savings. Then came the superbly priced Honda Brio, which at a starting price of INR 3.95 Lakhs, ex-showroom Delhi has all the trappings of being a best seller. Now, Honda has just come out with the most important of announcements yet, of that of Honda bringing in diesel engines for its Indian line up.

While this isn’t exactly something we hadn’t reported earlier, Honda SIEL officials openly speaking about diesel engines for Honda cars in India only means that Brand Honda is going all out to ensure that it manages to stay relevant in the Indian market by adapting itself to the growing trend of diesel engined cars outselling petrol engined cars in India owing to high petrol prices and the big difference in pricing between petrol and diesel fuel. Currently, Honda sells six models in India, the Brio, the Jazz, the City, the Civic, the CR-V and the Accord.

Of these cars, European variants of the Civic, CR-V and Accord already feature powerful and frugal common rail, turbo diesel engines. So, only three of Honda’s six cars in India actually need brand new diesel engines developed from scratch. For the record, Honda has already begun development of diesel engines on a war footing with engineers from Honda’s former F1 program actually being involved in this high stakes project. Hence, it is just a matter of time before Honda comes up with small capacity diesel engines for its Indian bread-and-butter product line up, although the firm remains tight lipped about when exactly the new small capacity diesel engines will be available.

Meanwhile, here’s official word emerging about Honda’s diesel engined car model plans for the Indian market, from Mr Jnaneswar Sen, Vice-President (Sales and Marketing) HSCI.

The Research and Development team in Japan is developing diesel engines. It is premature to say that the products will be rolled out on diesel (platform).

Source;
http://www.indiancarsbikes.in/cars/honda-bring-diesel-engined-cars-india-official-word-emerges-49690/

Rumors DON'T Get Any HOTTER This! Will The iPhone 5 And 4s Obsolete SYNC And ALL Others?

If you take ALL of the Apple rumors over the last 5 years and balled them up, I don't think the totality would equal the hype about what's coming this Tuesday at 10AM PT, at the companies iPhone event.

SO many rumors and girations are flying faster across the intertubes than the Concorde in it's finest moment.

Will the iPhone 5 be introduced along with an iPhone 4s and cheaper pricing/plans?

Will the iPhone 5 have the rumored teardrop shape, larger screen, 4g, 8 megapixel camera, blah, blah, blah?

Will there be NO iPhone 5, only a 4S and cheaper 4's?

But the BIGGEST rumor which has us at AutoSpies.com so jacked up about is the speculation that they will introduce the most amazing voice technology interface in history born out of their acquisition of Siri.

Check out what Forbes had to say about it:

"The Siri voice control system allows users to instruct the iPhone to ‘send a text message to Jason Schwarz asking him meet me for lunch’. Think about this capability in terms of safety. We all know that too many drivers send and receive text messages, now they will be able to safely operate an iPhone in the car. The voice assistant adds a layer of intelligence as well. If I ask my iPhone to ‘call Dad’ it might ask me whether it should dial his home phone or his mobile. It is also able to perform Web based search functions such as ‘book a table for two at 9:00 tonight’ or ‘send a taxi to my house’. Siri worked with Citysearch, Opentable and Taxi Magic before the Apple acquisition"

If this is true then it's GAME OVER for Microsoft SYNC and ALL other in car voice interfaces and the Spies predict they will HAVE to license the Apple technology going forward.

We've always said that interactive voice to text and vice versa in the car is the KILLER app.

You see it all the time, people texting while driving and it's VERY dangerous.

And we're ALL guilty for doing it.

With this new technology, is press a button and say for example, 'TEXT 00R AND 009…then it records the message... 'Agent 00R and 009 are WAY less cool than 001' and the system converts you voice to text and send to the recipient. When a new text comes in, it reads it and then offers options.

But it's not like old one dimensional systems like dragon dictate.

This can do contextual stuff like 'find map to 90068' and 'send directions to 001JR'.

So not only should the auto manufacturers be worried but GOOGLE should be worried.

Because if its as good as we're told, the masses using smartphones will be using APPLE voice search vs. Google or whomever!

Here is a video simulation of how it could work from MacRumors:



Source;
http://www.autospies.com/news/Rumors-DON-T-Get-Any-HOTTER-This-Will-The-iPhone-5-And-4s-Obsolete-SYNC-And-ALL-Others-67047/

Honda's Asimo Can Now Copy Your Dance Moves

POSTED BY: Erico Guizzo / Fri, September 30, 2011
ASIMO, the Honda humanoid, one of the world's most loved robots, was showing off its dance moves this week at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco.

The robot was here to demonstrate some new tricks it's been learning from scientists at the Honda Research Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, Behzad Dariush, and colleagues work with Asimo seeking to develop robotics technologies that can assist people, especially in terms of mobility.

In one demonstration, the scientists showed how Asimo can mimic a person's movements in real time. The researchers use Microsoft's Kinect 3D sensor to track selected points on a person's upper body, and their software uses an inverse kinematics approach to generate control commands to make Asimo move. The software prevents self collisions and excessive joint motions that might damage its system and is integrated with Asimo's whole-body controller in order to maintain balance. The researchers say that the ability of mimicking a person in real time could find applications in robot programming and interactive teleoperation, among other things.

In another demo, the scientists showed how they're using gestures to improve Asimo's communication skills. They're developing a gesture-generating system that takes any input text and analyzes its grammatical structure, timing, and choice of word phrases to automatically generate movements for the robot. To make the behavior more realistic, the scientists used a vision system to capture humans performing various gestures, and then they incorporated these natural movements into their gesture-generating system.

Here's a video showing these two demos:

Source (via www.autoblog.com);
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/asimo-can-copy-your-dance-moves?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29