The NAO Humanoid robot from French robotics company, Aldebaran Robotics,
was recently chosen by the RoboCup Standard Platform League to be its new standard platform. The league, formerly known as the Four-Legged League, used to use Sony's AIBO robot as it's standard platform. However, since Sony
has canceled its robotics divison, a new platform had to be chosen.
In the league all teams use identical robots. Therefore the teams
concentrate on software development only, while still using
state-of-the-art robots. The robots operate fully autonomously, i.e.
there is no external control, neither by humans nor by computers. This
year, the league goes through a transition from the four-legged Sony
AIBO to the humanoid Aldebaran Nao.
This certainly is exciting news for Aldebaran Robotics, which is a relatively new company. They plan on releasing NAO to the general public later this year for around 3,000 EUROS, or about $4,000 USD.
We were able to talk to Bruno Maisonnier, the CEO of Aldebaran, at RoboCup2007 (this is prior to the announcement). You can check out the interview below: