Technology giant Honda has shown that a robotic personal assistant that can help you in and out of the home is no longer solely the subject of science fiction, with the debut of its latest ASIMO robot.

The humanoid machine has been upgraded so that it can now run, hop and even pick up and interact with objects in the world around it.

Honda has been working on robotics since the 1980s, and this latest incarnation of ASIMO is the most advanced the company has ever produced, with improvements made to movement and reactions.

Satoshi Shigemi, the chief engineer on ASIMO said: "Previous generations of ASIMO have demonstrated incredible fluidity and speed of movements.

"The all-new ASIMO takes this mobility, task performing ability and interaction with people to the next level and moves Honda one step closer to its ultimate goal of developing a robot that can be a helper to people in need."

At the company's ASIMO Studio in Brussels, the robot demonstrated its ability to perform sign language in American and Japanese, as well as run and hop for the first time.

Honda said the improved agility and dexterity meant it was getting closer to being deployed as a helper for those who needed it, with suggestions it could work with the disabled or elderly.

The car manufacturer also used the presentation to demonstrate its take on the future of mobility with their UNI-CUB device, which uses weight distribution and leaning to control its movement.

This, along with ASIMO, has already been trailed in one Tokyo museum to guide visitors, with the company saying that this feedback would influence how the two devices would continue to evolve.

Robotics is an area of technology that continues to grow, with the first humanoid robotics conference taking place in Madrid later this year.

Honda began their own development project in 1986, when they created the E0 robot, which had no torso and took up to 5 seconds to complete a single step.

In comparison, the new ASIMO can run at up to 9km an hour.

The company has also created a survey robot that can be used to enter areas too dangerous for humans - a project created after the fallout of the 2011 Japanese earthquake that affected the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Honda's survey robot has since entered the reactor building at the crippled site.