Rizki Kougetsu

Nao (pronounced now) is an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot developed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French robotics company headquartered in Paris. The robot's development began with the launch of Project Nao in 2004. On 15 August 2007, Nao replaced Sony's robot dog Aibo as the robot used in the Robocup Standard Platform League (SPL), an international robot soccer competition. The Nao was used in RoboCup 2008 and 2009, and the NaoV3R was chosen as the platform for the SPL at RoboCup 2010.

The Nao Academics Edition was developed for universities and laboratories for research and education purposes. It was released to institutions in 2008, and was made publicly available by 2011. The robot has since entered use in numerous academic institutions worldwide, including theUniversity of Tokyo, India's IIT Kanpur and Saudi Arabia's Alfaisal University. In December 2011, Aldebaran Robotics released the Nao Next Gen, featuring enhanced software, a more powerful CPU and HD cameras.

Six prototypes of Nao were designed between 2005 and 2007. In March 2008, the first production version of the robot, the Nao Robocup Edition, was released to the contestants of that year's Robocup. The Nao Academics Edition was released to universities, education institutes and research laboratories in late 2008.

In the summer of 2010, Nao made global headlines with a synchronized dance routine at the Shanghai Expo in China. In October 2010, theUniversity of Tokyo purchased 30 Nao robots for their Nakamura Lab, with hopes of developing the robots into active lab assistants. In December 2010, a Nao robot was demonstrated doing a stand-up comedy routine, and a new version of the robot was released, featuring sculpted arms and improved motors. In May 2011, Aldebaran announced that it would release Nao's controlling source code to the public asopen source software. In June 2011, Aldebaran raised US$13 million in a round of venture funding led by Intel Capital.

In December 2011, Aldebaran launched the Nao Next Gen, featuring hardware and software enhancements such as HD cameras, improved robustness, anti-collision systems and a faster walking speed. Since 2011, over 200 academic institutions worldwide have made use of the robot. In 2012, donated Nao robots were used to teach autistic children in a UK school; some of the children found the childlike, expressive robots more relatable than human beings.

The various versions of the Nao robotics platform feature either 14, 21 or 25 degrees of freedom (DoF). A specialised model with 21 DoF and no actuated hands was created for the Robocup competition. All Nao Academics versions feature an inertial measurement unit withaccelerometer, gyrometer and four ultrasonic sensors that provide Nao with stability and positioning within space. The legged versions included eight force-sensing resistors and two bumpers.

The Nao robot also features an onboard Linux-powered multimedia system, including four microphones (for voice recognition and sound localization), two speakers (for text-to-speech synthesis) and two HD cameras (for computer vision, including facial and shape recognition). The robot comes with a software suite that includes a graphical programming tool ("Choregraphe"), simulation software and a software developer's kit. Nao is also compatible with the Microsoft Robotics Studio, Cyberbotics Webots, and the Gostai Urbi Studio.An upgraded version of the robot, featuring enhanced multilingual speech synthesis, will be released in 2014.