I think asimo is named after Asimov Derf, but that they just had to give it a scientific twist to make it sound more serious. Hence the abbreviation.
It' s like political parties over here...cos we don't have a two party system there are a ton of little parties with sometimes weird names. But their name must always be an abbreviation. So....a party founded by a dandy named Jean-Pierre Van Rossem was named R.O.S.S.E.M. and they just used some half random words to make it an actual abbreviation.
Anyway, just saying that the Asimo abbreviation probably was in the same vein.