Honda Motor Co.

Honda is a Japanese automotive group founded in 1948 and listed in Tokyo under code 7267. It matters to robotics for one reason: for years it developed the ASIMO humanoid, one of the best-known robots in the industry’s history. In 2022 the company closed that programme and redirected its engineering in two directions. The first is the teleoperated Honda Avatar Robot, a machine controlled remotely by a person. The second is a multi-fingered robotic hand. The change of course shows that the group judged autonomous human-like walking too far from practical use, and remote work closer to the market. As of 2026 the Avatar Robot is not a commercial product and remains a prototype, presented in May 2026. No commercialisation date or price has been announced. Honda’s story in robotics is therefore one of a long, costly road from a spectacular humanoid to more cautious, specialised solutions, and its next chapter is not yet known.

Honda’s current offer in our coverage is a single prototype: Honda Avatar Robot. It is classified as a humanoid robot in the humanoid robots category, although its core is teleoperation. According to the manufacturer’s description it features a hand five times stronger than ASIMO’s, controlled among other means by the operator’s gaze. The intended use is remote work in dangerous or distant environments, and the audiences are research and the remote-work sector. There is no data on height, weight, payload or the number of degrees of freedom, so we cannot compare it with the designs discussed in “Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots”. Honda also does not describe any autonomy: the robot does not make decisions on its own, it carries out a person’s commands. That is a fundamental difference from the machines we write about in “Humanoid Robots in Factories 2026”. No price has been announced, and there is no question of sales. In this way Honda shows a different philosophy from most humanoid makers: instead of replacing the worker, it wants to give them remote hands where access is difficult or dangerous. For industrial use this means an operator must be present for every task, so none of the labour savings promised by autonomous machines. The profitability of such a solution is hard to judge without a price, so we offer no estimates. We compile prices of humanoids on sale in our cost article.

Today Honda sits behind the front runners in market readiness. Competitors building autonomous humanoids for physical work, such as Figure AI and Galbot, show machines tested in plants, while Unitree Robotics already sells its humanoids to customers. Honda has stepped away from that path in favour of teleoperation. The closest counterpart is Toyota Motor with its T-HR3 (Toyota T-HR3), also remotely controlled but with a longer history of demonstrations. In that comparison Honda has the advantage of brand and engineering depth, but no product you can order. Its strength is the experience from ASIMO, its weakness the lack of a commercial timeline. A market share cannot be given, because no Honda robot is currently on sale. This is not a final verdict: teleoperation is sometimes treated as an intermediate stage at which data is gathered to train autonomous models, and Honda has the financial backing to pursue such a direction. Until a price and a date appear, comparisons with competitors rest solely on announcements.

Honda is a well-known automotive brand in Poland, but the group’s robotics has no offer here. The Avatar Robot is a research and development project that is not available in any market, and so not in Poland either. There is no Polish distributor, price list or information about planned demonstrations or pilots. Readers interested in humanoids available in Poland will find information in the humanoid robots category and in the price overview in “How Much Does a Humanoid Robot Cost in 2026”. Interested readers can follow the group’s announcements, because if commercialisation comes, the first deployments will probably go to selected customers in Japan. No offer should be expected on the Polish market in the coming years.

The Honda Avatar Robot is an interesting direction, but for now only a prototype. The group has enormous experience after ASIMO, yet has given no date and no price. For companies and schools it is currently a topic to watch, not to buy. For schools, universities and companies looking for a robot for real work, the Honda Avatar Robot is not an alternative today, because it has neither a price nor sales. It is worth watching as a signal that teleoperation remains a serious direction for humanoids.