The French start up Aldebaran-Robotics based in Paris has high hopes for its humanoid robot called NAO. The device is 57 cm high and weighs 4.5 kilograms (about the size of a 6 month old baby) and you may be about to see a lot more of it. The company has sent a simplified version to 16 teams playing in the Robocup humanoid football league this year.
NAO looks an impressive device, judging by the design, which the company has posted on the arXiv today. And others clearly agree. Earlier this year, the company picked up Euros 5 million in venture capital funding to help commercialise the device. The target market is university research labs involved in developing the next generation of software and hardware for robotics.
That’s a smart move because it could make NAO a de facto standard.
NAO doesn’t come cheap, however. A single robot will set you back Euros 10K but that is significantly cheaper than most other humanoids. Fujitsu’s HOAP costs $50K, for instance, and Honda hasn’t been able to put price on Asimo.
The company hopes that economies of scale will bring down the price as production scales up. Eventually it hopes to sell NAO to the public for Euros 4K each.
Better start saving.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0807.3223: The NAO Humanoid: A Combination of Performance and Affordability
the physics arXiv blog 
July 23, 2008 at 11:18 pm |
Yes I agree with you.
The company may get a huge market share by offering a robot of such a low cost.
July 24, 2008 at 12:48 am |
Nao is unlike to become a ‘de facto standard’ when it is just a hulk of crap. It’s incredibly unreliable, overheats, bricks itself, falls apart, the battery doesn’t last, the ethernet port breaks…. there’s a *long* way to go before Nao is ready for consumer use, Alderbaran are pushing an unfinished product onto the market to appease their investors, I pity anyone who buys one.
July 24, 2008 at 3:39 am |
It’s a good thing Jack Williamson didn’t live to see this. “to serve and obey and guard men from harm”.
July 24, 2008 at 7:03 am |
The NAO project is futile! It is impossible to beat the japanese in robotics, as their product build quality is legendary and they have incredible 4G telecommunications technology, light years ahead of Europe or USA.
The japanese also got much more incentive to develop artificial humanoids: essentially the whole country grew up watching “ginzo ningen” (mechanical person) anime and manga.
The japanese need androids to care for their quickly aging population, as their life expectancy is now over 84 years on average.
Japan does not have the kind of cheap african or mexican immigrant labour which is available in France or the USA to fill menial jobs. Therefore Japan must have robots for repetitive household chores soon.
They are also developing powered exoskeletons (mecha) to allow elderly peasants continue working on the rice plantations. For some reason Japan still insists on producing a good portion of its food supply domestically, even if it means denying more land from new skycrapers.
July 24, 2008 at 7:35 am |
There are a bunch of robots cheaper than NAO.
Like this one
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=K_c72NCLw1M
And lot more
July 24, 2008 at 9:07 am |
jordi – but are they autonomous? – no.
It is easy enough to string together some servos on a metal frame to make something that looks humanoid – but similarly precise autonomous robots are rare and often much more expensive (HRP, QRio, Hoap, Asimo)
July 25, 2008 at 1:33 am |
Ethernet port breaks? Dude, you dont plug this thing into Ethernet – goes suck your own cock
July 25, 2008 at 4:33 am |
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July 28, 2008 at 3:29 am |
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August 11, 2008 at 7:35 am |
Hello,
Its funny to read you.
Funny because you don’t know lots of things about Nao.
The price for academic version is 15K€/15k$.
The goal price for public version is 3k€ since the beginning.
About the Dave’s comment, Aldebaran will not push an unfinished product onto the market. Aldebaran have delayed the pre-release (release for fan) of his product, because he wants make some modification in the hardware. The robocup have shown some limitation with the actual hardware.
About Tacsk0’s comment, its not impossible to beat Japan in a very specific window. The goal of Japan actually is to make a real human robot, the size (or near) of an human size, etc. This is not the actual goal of Aldebaran (but it their final goal), Nao is a small robot very autonomous, and the lonely robot (or near the lonely) like that on the market. But, this is the better robot like that. Robocup have choosed it. Do you think Robocup are stupid and make bad choice ?
September 10, 2008 at 6:46 pm |
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
November 13, 2008 at 8:34 pm |
ware do you buy this robot at pleas email back telling ware you get it!!!.