Aldebaran Robotics Gives NAO a New Brain, And Much More

Aldebaran Robotics, the creators of the well known NAO humanoid robot, obviously have a strong commitment to advancing the state of the art in robotics technology and applications. During the RoboCup 2011 competition in Instanbul they unveiled the 4th generation NAO loaded with new enhancements, improved performance, and features requested and suggested by their rapidly growing user base in leading educational, academic, and research facilities from all over the world.

While the external appearance of NAO V4 may not have changed in obvious ways (don't worry, NAO still has the cute, lovable, boyish character that's made him so popular), the changes under the hood are really impressive and will make it much easier and attractive to users developing robotic applications as well as researchers.

The NAO V4 version isn't scheduled to ship until Fall 2011, though it is available for pre-order now, so we don't have firm test results or user feedback yet. Based on information directly from Aldebaran, the improvements and enhancements that users can look forward to include:

Hardware-

1.     New embedded 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor - more onboard processing, allowing developers to move a significant portion of their application to NAO making it much more autonomous
2.     Onboard Bluetooth - it's a little surprising to realize that earlier NAO versions didn't have embedded Bluetooth built-in.
3.     New Vision system - completely redesigned with new dual HD cameras and a dedicated video processor so that both cameras can be used simultaneously.

Software-

1.     New voice recognition algorithm - working with Nuance, Aldebaran has been able to give NAO V4 faster and more accurate voice recognition as well as new word spotting and isolation capability.
2.     Smart stiffness control - improves NAO's reliability and durability
3.     Anti-self-collision system - sounds puzzling... Did older NAO versions run into themselves often? I'm sure there will be further clarification on this feature coming from Aldebaran soon.
4.     Improved walk algorithm - enables faster walking as well as making it easier to customize the robots walking motion.
5.     NAO resource managerI was hoping to hear more about the company's plans to open-source part of the NAO platform code, but apparently the company isn't ready to share the details quite yet. I'll keep you advised as more information becomes available.