Mad props to Erico Guizzo from IEEE Spectrum for coming up with this robot baby matrix, which is pretty self explanatory (right?). Robot baby matrix… That’s my official phrase of the day. Click to embiggen.

Robots include:

Nao
M3-Neony
Nexi
Simon
iCub
CB2
Diego-San
Zeno
Yotaro
Kojiro
Robotinho
Repliee R1
RealCare Baby

[ IEEE Spectrum ]

Last year, it was a Billie Jean tribute dance. This year, twenty Aldebaran Robotics Naos are kicking it up a notch by dancing in sync to nearly ten minutes worth of music including Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Never mind the choreography that must have been involved… Consider what ten minutes with no screw ups implies about the precision and repeatability of Nao’s software. Impressive, but until Nao figures out how to do a head spin, I think Manoi can still bust better moves.

VIA [ Wired ]

Yeah, so it goes about how you’d expect. The robot in the ring is the Genuine Great King Kizer, a 1 meter tall 9 kilo humanoid with 37 servos and 25 degrees of freedom. Every 18 months or so, designer Naoki Maru has doubled the size of this robot, which means that it’ll be playing soccer with Hajime 33 sometime in 2011.

Meantime, let’s get some industrial robots and see if one of them can pin the guy in the tight shorts. Or just, you know, crush him.

VIA [ GetRobo ]

I don’t know where Nao got its hands on a Surface table, but I’m insanely jealous. My nonexistent knowledge of French makes me think that Nao is probably saying something like, “wow, this thing is awesome! Too bad you don’t have one!” The fact that Nao can use the table at all, though, is a good example of one of the advantages of Surface: it’s not touch sensitive, but rather uses an array of cameras underneath the semi-transparent tabletop to track fingertips and other objects, letting you manipulate things in all kinds of nifty ways.

If you’re interested in what else Surface can do, I’ve posted a video after the break from CES 2008, where I got a hands-on demo of Surface. If you want to play around with it for yourself someplace outside of Vegas, some AT&T stores have them, but it’s not likely they’re set up for gaming. Shame. (Read more…)

This, apparently, is the trick Nao has up his nonexistent sleeve that’ll help him pick up chicks. Personally, I can throw a Frisbee slightly better than Nao, but it hasn’t helped me pick up chicks at all, unless you count picking them up off the ground after your wayward Frisbee smashes into the side of their head. Oh well, I can only assume it’s because I don’t live in Japan.

Watch Nao dance (’cause Nao likes to dance), after the jump. (Read more…)

Nao, the standard class humanoid for Robocup, took some time off from playing soccer at the 2009 competition this week to perform a tribute dance routine to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Say what you want about the guy, but he could sure dance, and he does a more than passable robot, as you can see at the end of an (actual) Billie Jean performance, after the jump. (Read more…)

Now that the Sony AIBO is, sadly, more or less completely defunct, it’s up to Aldebaran Robotics’ Nao humanoid to compete in RoboCup soccer tournaments. Nao hasn’t had nearly as much experience (i.e. software development time) as the AIBOs, but they’re getting off to a very good start for robots that have to balance themselves on two legs. Well, a fairly good start, anyway. See for yourself:

Bowdoin vs. CMU (3rd Place Match) – First Half

More competition vids, after the jump. (Read more…)

Aldebaran Robotics has released a new video of their little humanoid robot, Nao. Designed to be an entertainment robot for the entire family, Nao has all of the bells and whistles that you’d expect to find in a consumer humanoid, including limbs with 25 degrees of freedom, operable hands, stereo vision, voice recognition and synthesis, and a programmable Linux OS. Nao is programmable in either a graphic environment or a code environment, and is supposed to be appropriate for all ranges of skill. Besides adding software and behaviors, you can also customize Nao’s hardware, and swap out his head if he starts to piss you off.

By the end of 2009, you should be able to buy your own Nao, for somewhere between $15,000 and $16,000. Why would you pay so much money for a humanoid robot who’s only 23″ tall? ‘Cause he’s entertaining, that’s why. I mean, he recycles ducks. Doesn’t get much better than that.

[ Aldebaran Robotics' NAO ]

Thanks Andrew!