The Robot Hall of Fame marked a first at its second annual induction ceremony last night: Two inductees met for the first time, as Honda's ASIMO robot shook hands with C-3PO of "Star Wars."

	John Heller, Post-Gazette Honda's Humanoid Robot, ASIMO, meets his human counterpart, Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C-3PO in all six "Star Wars" films. The robot was at the Carnegie Science Center yesterday to be inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame. Click photo for larger image.

"I feel so humbled by this," said British actor Anthony Daniels, who played the gold-plated C-3PO in six "Star Wars" movies, as he stood facing the 4-foot-high, white plastic ASIMO. "I feel unworthy."

C-3PO may be famous, but he's strictly make-believe. ASIMO, while not exactly a workaday robot, is the most accomplished walking robot to date, able to walk forward, backward and up and down stairs. At least mechanically, the humanoid ASIMO is beginning to meet some of the expectations set by its fictional brethren.

Real and make-believe coexist amicably in the Robot Hall of Fame, a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Science Center.

Fictional robots outnumbered actual robots this year, as C-3PO was joined by Robby the Robot from the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet" and Astro Boy, an animated robot boy created by Osamu Tezuka in 1951. ASIMO was joined by the Stanford Research Institute's Shakey, which in 1969 became the first mobile robot able to see and navigate on its own.

James H. Morris, the hall of fame founder and dean of CMU's West Coast campus, said the imbalance has more to do with the makeup of the selection jury than anything else.

The jury includes both those involved in the technological development of robots and those, like science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who write and think about robots.

"In some sense, everybody knows about popular culture," Morris said, noting each juror gets 10 votes. "Not so many know about Shakey."

Peter Hart, chairman and president of Ricoh Innovations Inc. and a member of the Shakey team, said fictional robots have assisted in the development of real robots.

"Fictional robots have played an important role in creating dreams," he explained. "Everything starts with a dream."

Last year, the hall was inaugurated with the induction of Unimate, the first industrial robot; Sojourner from NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission; the HAL-9000 computer from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and R2-D2 of "Star Wars."

Daniels refused to quibble about which of the "Star Wars" robots should have been inducted first and maintained he was unnerved about meeting ASIMO.

"I can't tell you how strange this is for me," Daniels said. "I am the only robot I know."