Nao Available in 2010
November 19th, 2008
Aldebaran Robotics is the French company that develops this impressive humanoid bot, Nao. Nao replaced the AIBO as the standard platform in the Robocup challenge, an annual soccer game played by humanoid robots. This has helped cement the bot’s popularity among robot researchers and enthusiasts.
Nao is fully programmable, and boasts fancy tech: “With its humanoid appearance [Nao] can be made to do any number of tasks and comes with x86 AMD Geocode 500 Mhz CPU, 1 GB flash memory, 256 MB SDRAM, two speakers, vision processing capabilities, Wi-fi connectivity and Ethernet port.”
The robot is desirable to researchers and roboticists, because it gives them the ability to take a blank, versatile robot and program it to do whatever they want, including world-domination. Aldebaran is also working on a behavior exchange site where users can swap code they’ve written for little Nao.
Only about 100 Naos have been shipped since the bot’s inception in April — it’s distribution has so far been limited to only the robo-elite (labs and universities), but plans are in order to extend the user base next year to include some early adopters. The company is still working to create a version of Nao that will appeal to the general public, which probably won’t be until 2010. Until then you can start saving up the $12,600 it will cost to buy one.
[Wired]
May 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
[...] players, but until that happens just sit back and enjoy some Robo-sports. This year its based on Nao humanoid bots. More [...]
June 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
[...] a brighter note, Aldebaran Robotics is very proud of their product which we first told you about in November. They want to send you this adorable/irresistible robot not just for your money, but [...]