Japan's Honda has denied a press report it is hoping to retool its humanoid robot ASIMO to enable it to join emergency work inside the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun said in its Friday evening edition that Honda was aiming to upgrade the robot's upper body functions so that it can move its arms as smoothly as a human being.

US Honda spokeswoman Lauren Ebner said the report was "speculation."

"Although Honda hopes that ASIMO will someday be a helper to people, at this point the robot is solely a research and design project," Ebner said in a statement to AFP.

No official at Honda's head office in Tokyo was available for comment on Friday.

The current ASIMO, introduced in 2000 and resembling a small astronaut, stands 130 centimetres (4 feet 3 inches) tall. The bipedal bot can walk, run, carry trays, push carts and shake hands with people.

Asahi said that to work in the debris-strewn nuclear plant, ASIMO would likely be modified and fitted with tyres or caterpillar tracks.

The Fukushima plant has been leaking radiation from its reactors since its cooling systems were knocked out by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. At some hotspots radiation is high enough to be lethal to humans.

Robots have already been used inside the plant to take video footage, including the US-made PackBot and Japanese-made Quince crawler robots.

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