Nao (pronounced ''now'') is an autonomous, programmable

humanoid robot A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion, or for other pur ...

formerly developed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

company headquartered in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, which was acquired by

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

in 2015 and rebranded as

SoftBank Robotics is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...

. The robot's development began with the launch of Project Nao in 2004. On 15 August 2007, Nao replaced

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

's robot dog

Aibo AIBO (''stylized aibo, Artificial Intelligence Robot'', homonymous with , "pal" or "partner" in Japanese) is a series of robotic dogs designed and manufactured by Sony. Sony announced a prototype Aibo in mid-1998, and the first consumer model wa ...

as the robot used in the

RoboCup RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition founded in 1996 by a group of university professors (including Hiroaki Kitano, Manuela M. Veloso, and Minoru Asada). The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI research by offer ...

Standard Platform League (SPL), an international robot

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

competition. The Nao was used in RoboCup 2008 and 2009, and the NaoV3R was chosen as the platform for the SPL at RoboCup 2010. Several versions of the robot have been released since 2008. The Nao Academics Edition was developed for universities and laboratories for research and education purposes. It was released to institutions in 2008, and was made publicly available by 2011. Various upgrades to the Nao platform have since been released, including the 2011 Nao Next Gen and the 2014 Nao Evolution. Nao robots have been used for research and education purposes in numerous academic institutions worldwide. As of 2015, over 5,000 Nao units are in use in more than 50 countries.

Development history

Aldebaran Robotics was established in 2005 by Bruno Maisonnier, who had previously begun developing the robot under "Project Nao" in 2004. Six prototypes of Nao were designed between 2005 and 2007. In March 2008, the first production version of the robot, the Nao RoboCup Edition, was released to the contestants of that year's RoboCup. The Nao Academics Edition was released to universities, educational institutions and research laboratories in late 2008. In the summer of 2010, Nao made global headlines with a synchronized dance routine at the

Shanghai Expo Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the tr ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. In October 2010, the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

purchased 30 Nao robots for their Nakamura Lab, with hopes of developing the robots into active laboratory assistants."Le robot français Nao fait ses classes à l'Université de Tokyo"
(in French). ''

L'Express ''L'Express'' () is a French weekly news magazine headquartered in Paris. The weekly stands at the political centre in the French media landscape, and has a lifestyle supplement, ''L'Express Styles'', and a job supplement, ''Réussir''. History ...

''. Retrieved 4 October 2012. In December 2010, a Nao robot was demonstrated doing a

stand-up comedy Stand-up comedy is a comedy, comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of One-line joke ...

routine, and a new version of the robot was released, featuring sculpted arms and improved motors. In May 2011, Aldebaran announced that it would release Nao's controlling

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

to the public as

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software. In June 2011, Aldebaran raised US$13 million in a round of

venture funding Venture capital financing is a type of funding by venture capital. It is private equity capital that can be provided at various stages or funding rounds. Common funding rounds include early-stage seed funding in high-potential, growth companies ( ...

led by Intel Capital. In 2013, Aldebaran was acquired by Japan's

SoftBank Mobile is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

for US$100 million. In December 2011, Aldebaran released the Nao Next Gen, featuring hardware and software enhancements such as high density cameras, improved robustness, anti-collision systems and a faster walking speed."Aldebaran Robotics announces Nao Next Gen humanoid robot"
Engadget. 10 December 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2012. The Nao Evolution, featuring enhanced durability, improved multilingual speech synthesis, improved shape and

facial detection Face detection is a computer technology being used in a variety of applications that identifies human faces in digital images. Face detection also refers to the psychological process by which humans locate and attend to faces in a visual scene. ...

and recognition using new algorithms, and improved sound source location using four directional microphones, was released in June 2014. Aldeberan Robotics was acquired by

in 2015 and rebranded as SoftBank Robotics.

Academic and scientific usage

Since 2011, over 200 academic institutions worldwide have made use of the robot, including the

University of Hertfordshire The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is a public university in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. The university is based largely in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Its antecedent institution, Hatfield Technical College, was founded in 1948 and was ident ...

and thei
Bold Hearts RoboCup Team
the

Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-Allahabad), is a public university located in Jhalwa, Allahabad (Prayagraj), in Uttar Pradesh. It is one of the twenty-five Indian Institutes of Information Technology listed by ...

, the

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) ( ar, جامعة الملك فهد للبترول و المعادن, – short: ar, جامعة البترول ), after 1975 as the University of Petroleum and Minerals and initially as the ...

University of South Wales The University of South Wales ( cy, Prifysgol De Cymru) is a public university in Wales, with campuses in Cardiff, Newport and Pontypridd. It was formed on 11 April 2013 from the merger of the University of Glamorgan and the University of Wal ...

and

Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...

. In 2012, donated Nao robots were used to teach

autistic The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

children in a UK school; some of the children found the childlike, expressive robots more relatable than human beings. In a broader context, Nao robots have been used by numerous British schools to introduce children to robots and the robotics industry. By the end of 2014, over 5,000 Nao robots were in use with educational and research institutions in 70 countries. In 2015,

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is a Japanese bank holding and financial services company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. MUFG holds assets of around US$3.1 trillion as of 2016 and is one of the "Three Great Houses" of the Mitsubishi Group alongside Mitsubishi Corpor ...

began trialling Nao robots for

customer service Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...

use in its Japanese bank branches. In July 2015, Nao robots were shown to demonstrate a basic form of self-awareness in a philosophical experiment at

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

in New York, in which three robots were set up, muting two of them; they were then told that two of them had been given a "dumbing pill", and asked to figure out which of them hadn't. After initially replying he didn't know, the non-muted robot was able to figure out he hadn't been given the dumbing pill after hearing the sound of his own voice. In September 2015, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research used Nao robots to test a system of robotic "autobiographical memory" designed to help train

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

crews and assist elderly patients. Nao is available as a research robot for schools, colleges and universities to teach programming and conduct research into human-robot interactions. In August 2018, RobotLAB released an online learning platform for schools that enhance the use of NAO for STEM, Coding and Engineering.

Healthcare usage

Since its release in 2004, Nao has been tested and deployed in a number of healthcare scenarios, including usage in care homes and in schools.

Design

The various versions of the Nao robotics platform feature either 2, 14, 21 or 25

degrees of freedom Degrees of freedom (often abbreviated df or DOF) refers to the number of independent variables or parameters of a thermodynamic system. In various scientific fields, the word "freedom" is used to describe the limits to which physical movement or ...

(DoF). A specialised model with 21 DoF and no actuated hands was created for the Robocup competition. All Nao Academics versions feature an

inertial measurement unit An inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an electronic device that measures and reports a body's specific force, angular rate, and sometimes the orientation of the body, using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and sometimes magnetometer ...

with

accelerometer An accelerometer is a tool that measures proper acceleration. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of a body in its own instantaneous rest frame; this is different from coordinate acceleration, which is accele ...

, gyrometer and four

ultrasonic sensor Ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic sensors are devices that generate or sense ultrasound energy. They can be divided into three broad categories: transmitters, receivers and transceivers. Transmitters convert electrical signals into ultrasoun ...

s that provide Nao with stability and positioning within space. The legged versions included eight

force-sensing resistor A force-sensing resistor is a material whose resistance changes when a force, pressure or mechanical stress is applied. They are also known as force-sensitive resistor and are sometimes referred to by the initialism FSR. History The techn ...

s and two bumpers. The 2014 Nao Evolution, featured stronger metallic joints, improved grip and an enhanced sound source location system that utilises four directional microphones. The most recent version, dubbed NAO6, was introduced in June 2018.

Software

The Nao robot is controlled by a specialised

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

, dubbed NAOqi. The OS powers the robot's multimedia system, which includes four microphones (for voice recognition and

sound localization Sound localization is a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance. The sound localization mechanisms of the mammalian auditory system have been extensively studied. The auditory system u ...

), two speakers (for multilingual

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...

synthesis) and two HD cameras (for

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

, including facial and shape recognition). The robot also comes with a software suite that includes a graphical programming tool dubbed Choregraphe, a simulation software package and a software developer's kit. Nao is furthermore compatible with the

Microsoft Robotics Studio Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (Microsoft RDS, MRDS) is a discontinued Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation that was aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handled a wide variety of robot hardware. I ...

, Cyberbotics Webots, and the Gostai Studio (

URBI Urbi is an open-source cross-platform software platform in C++ used to develop applications for robotics and complex systems. Urbi is based on the UObject distributed C++ component architecture. It also includes the urbiscript orchestration langu ...

). In August 2018, RobotLAB released Engage! K12. It is an online learning platform for schools that enhance the use of NAO for STEM, Coding and Engineering. In February 2018, Finnish company Utelias Technologies released Elias Robot, a learning application that helps to learn languages with NAO.

Specifications

References

External links

* an
YouTube channel
* *

Blanca Li Blanca Li, originally Blanca María Gutiérrez Ortiz (born January 12, 1964) is a Spanish choreographer, film director, dancer, and actress. She has created choreographies for the Paris Opera Ballet, The Berlin Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, f ...

br>dance performance with Nao robot
(

World Science Festival The World Science Festival is an annual science festival produced by the World Science Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in New York City. There is also an Asia-Pacific event held in Brisbane, Australia. The foun ...

) *Barboza Space Center (The Occupy Mars Learning Adventures Projects with Nao) www.BarbozaSpaceCenter.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Nao (Robot) Bipedal humanoid robots Robots of France Soccer robots Educational robots Entertainment robots 2008 robots Articles containing video clips