Our friend Carlos from Carlitos’ Contraptions has joined the Aldebaran Developer Program, they make the Nao humanoid platform. Thanks to Carlos we will get a first hand view into how this robot works and what it can do. At $16,000 it isn’t a toy but as a humanoid development platform that is a decent price. It reminds me a bit of the RoboSapien but is much bigger and has a ton more functions. Have a look at what Carlos has the Nao Robot doing so far. I think my next office assistant will have to be one of these robots!
“The NAO Humanoid Robot from Aldebaran Robotics is a companion, assistant and research platform. If the full-size personal butler is still a vision of the future, ALDEBARAN’s robots will already provide a perfect platform to deliver a range of daily services. With 25 degrees of freedom, NAO is capable of executing a wide range of movements (walking, sitting, standing up, dancing, avoiding obstacles, kicking, seizing objects, etc.)
Equipped standard with an embedded computer and wifi connection, NAO is fully autonomous and can establish a secure connection to the Internet to download and broadcast content. Fitted with two speakers and several microphones, NAO has a quality sound system to play music. It is equipped with a voice recognition system that locates where the sound is coming from, so that he can turn his head towards the speaker or origin of the sound. He has a text to speech function so he can interact with its environment verbally by pronouncing any text sent to him, messages, e-mail, books, newspapers, etc. “
