This weekend I had the chance and opportunity to attend Aldebaran’s developer program meet-up in Tokyo and to check in the “Flesh” their awesome robot NAO.
If you are a bit curious about Robotics I am sure that you have already heard about Aldebaran’s robot NAO, if not let’s say that NAO is what we were all hoping for with Sony’s QRIO that unfortunately never came.
Still at the prototype stage, NAO is not yet available for the rest of us, but Aldebaran is hoping to release their first batch of NAO Robots to the general public within two to three years at the earliest.
Now, what so special about Aldebaran (a French company) and NAO is the company’s approach to development, where after many years of internal testing, they decided to give to anyone (almost) the possibility to work and develop application/behaviors for NAO as well as giving the possibility for developers to share their work and even sale them if necessary.
Opened just two month ago, Aldebaran Developer Program is already a huge success and gathers some pretty amazing and talented developers, PhDs and researchers located either in Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan.
During this very interesting event, I had the chance however to stumble upon two very interesting things and demos, including a prototype charging station and a Kinect controlled NAO
