A French company called Aldebaran Robotics has
released several video clips
of a new robot they’re developing, called Nao.
They claim their humanoid robot will include voice recognition, vision,
speech synthesis, “emotional expressions”, a WiFi
connections, and will be based on Linux. Nao stands 22 inches high and
has 23 degrees of freedom. The exterior shell of the robot was created
by Parisian designers Thomas
Knoll and Erik
Arlen. The robot’s shell will be customizable by the user. The
robot will also support the
URBI (Universal Real-time Behavior
Interface) scripting language. This probably means they’ll integrate
Gostai’s proprietary URBI interpreter. The URBI the SDK libraries are
Free Software
licensed under the
GNU GPL,
however, so we can probably look forward to a free
implementation of URBI in the near future if it gains popularity. For
more on the Nao robot see the Linux Devices
story