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NAO Humanoid Robot Set To Hit the Market
KentuckyFC writes "Earlier this year, Paris-based Aldebaran-Robotics picked up $8 million in venture capital funding to help commercialize its NAO humanoid robot. The target market for this device is research labs working on the next generation of robotic hardware and software. Today, the company has posted a detailed spec of NAO on the arXiv saying that it expects the robot to cost about $15,000 each. That's cheap compared to other humanoids. Fuitsu's HOAP humanoids cost $50,000 each and various estimates price Honda's Asimo at $1 million per bot, although they are not for sale. Aldebaran-Robotics says that NAO's cost should come down to about $6,000 as production ramps up."
A hundred years from now, whether the readers are C or Fe, they will get a feeling of nausea reading about the 'retail prices' of 'humanoids.'
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I want my robot NAO!
Somewhere in the back of my mind I have this strange feeling that we are slowly heading into Asimov's world. And all the problems (and benefits) that come along with it ...
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Yes, it does run Linux.
I don't see the appeal to having a humanoid robot. The robots in Wall*e for example were all designed for a function.
I think of any robot as a machine. They are there to serve a purpose. Even the IVR systems make me angry when they imply "I'm sorry. I didn't get that". No, the computer didn't recognize what I said. And "you" aren't sorry.
Anthropomorphizing robots, cute as they are in Wall*e, is insulting to the beauty of that which is life.
The picture states that the robot has "23 inches" and points to a questionable area...
Quick, somebody wake Jasper up!
Monstar L
The company that manufactures Real Dolls better watch out.
Will the robots smell cheese too ? :)
- from a french guy
Why do you need a humanoid robot to play Nethack?
I'm so excited I... wait a minute, damn it! These aren't the driods we're looking for.
That really grinds my gears.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
For all the details, hit this PDF
NAOs head is equipped with an x86 AMD GEODE 500 MHz CPU motherboard with 256 Mb SDRAM. An additional 1Gb Flash memory is available. Communication with the robot is possible through WiFi 802.11g protocol and through Ethernet port. The CPU manages audio, video, and WiFi and other advanced modules. One ARM7-60MHz microcontroller located in the torso distributes information to all the actuator module microcontrollers (Microchip 16 bit dsPICS) through a RS485 bus (throughput of 460[Kbits=s]). There are two RS485 buses, one that connects the ARM7 microcontroller to the dsPICS modules of the upper part of the body, and the other that connects the ARM7 to the dsPICS modules of the lower part of the body. This bus partition permits to increase the data throughput.
The ARM-7 microcontroller communicates with the CPU board through a USB-2 bus with a theoretical throughput of 11[Mbits=s]. It can be used to control the robots stabilityusing the inertial unit. The operating system is based on Linux, but the whole system can be modified.
Sensors:
30 FPS CMOS videocamera 1
Gyrometer 2
Accelerometer 3
Magnetic rotary encoder (MRE) 34
FSR 8
Infrared sensor (emitter/receiver) 2
Ultrasonic sensor 2
Loudspeaker 2
Microphone 4
Thusly, I greet our robotic humanoid overlords with bowed neck and outstretched palms.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Ok, this is quite unlike me but I clicked the link and... Terminator 0.0.1 (alpha) looks like a robotic clown. She has no breasts, looks like sh'e made of HARD plastic, and doubtless has no vagina.
I'm going to pay $15,000 for that? Come on, dude, I want one like Data's daughter! What are you guys smoking? Speaking of smoking, I can get a real twenty five year old human crack whore for twenty bucks.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If it can't reach the beer in the fridge, then who really cares.
Wait til Microsoft convinces them to bundle... at least once a day the robot will jump off of a 3 story building or equivalent height, and when you ask tech support, they'll tell you to run Microsoft update to get the security patch that makes it possible for other people to make it jump off a bridge as well.
Never disregard the raw power inherent to stupidity... they call it "dumb luck" for a reason...
Say pieces on a board, make each a pair with another piece.
like...
|55|44|66|
|44|66|55|
so figure out how a piece can move.
pick any piece, try to move it somewhere.
when you move a piece you have to move it's pair at the same time.
when you move to a piece it's pair has to move at the same time too.
a piece always becomes a pair with the piece it moves to.
no matter how many pairs, there's only one answer to how a piece can move.
A common problem, I forget what it's called.
There's only one answer for how any piece can move.
A piece always goes where a piece leaves.
No piece can move to where a piece moves back where it came from.
No such thing as a free space, a piece always moves to another piece.
A pair never moves to a pair.
so try this...
draw for each piece a line from one piece to another that connects each piece to move from the first piece until the last piece that goes back where it starts.
see this as a machine diagram.
move a piece then figure the machine diagram again, it's the same machine.
that's a machine getting work done...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
FTA: "Initially, delivered with basic behaviors, the robot will be, at its market introduction, the ideal introduction to robots. Eventually, with many improved behaviors, it will become an autonomous family companion. Finally, with more sophisticated functions, it will adopt a new role, assisting with daily tasks (monitoring, etc.)"
Will, it, have, full, comma, functionality?
Does it run Linux? And if it takes a core dump, does it know that it should use the toilet? And will it fight for recognition as a sentient life form?
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
That blog is shit. The author did not even bother to run a spell checker. He obviously can not spell. If no one bothers to even help give an ounce of credibility to things posted here, the site is total bullshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
Why can't someone make a bipedal robot as impressive as bigdog?
Have styling by the same Mecha designer as Patlabor easily worth the added $35,000 for your own Alphonse. On the other hand the Hyper Operating System is almost as bad as Vista.
Am I alone in having 'Aldebaran-Robotics' making me think of 'Sirius Cybernetics'?
A humanoid robot that looked like me would be great, not just 'cos it looks like me (poor thing!), but I could send it to work and stay at home all day reading /.
Oh, hang on, I do that anyway. Oh well!
Smivs on the intertubes!
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...
So.. let me get this straight: It costs $15,000USD, is approximately the size of a six-month old baby, and looks like some plastic toy? Sure, I read another of the comments here describing what hardware and software it's running, and that's all cool and everything, but seriously: what is it good for other than it's value as a very expensive high-tech toy? It's too short, and I'm sure, too weak and/or clumsy, to do anything really useful for you in your day-to-day life? Seriously, I may be missing an important point here, but I don't see where someone would want to pay so much money for what seems to amount to a very expensive hackers toy.
Even in Sci-fi, the value of the humanoid robot is cost-savings.
If the brain of a general purpose robot is significantly more expensive than any body it will be put into, then you want that body to be able to handle as many tasks as possible, thus you make it to use all the tools that already exist for humans to use.
Until the brain is capable of handling all the tasks needed for operating as a semi-autonomous manual laborer, then a humanoid robot is just a nifty gadget with no real place in industry or other areas of production where we use specialized industrial robots today.
We suggested robotics to Abyss back in the '90s. They told us they were working on it.
Speaking of Aldebaran, wasn't that the star system Lovecraft's Old Ones were supposed to have come from?
Wait. I can see it now: Shag-Niggurath, Robotic Black Ho of the Woods with a Thousand Orifices....
"it expects the robot to cost about $15,000 each. That's cheap compared to other humanoids."
Gosh, yes. Have you seen the costs of raising kids?
Now instead of worrying about being attacked by botnets, we'll have to worry about getting attacked from robotnets. Wonderful.
That raises an interesting question:
Do you come with a return policy?
Your post was not as funny as previously advertised.
Why is it that all humanoid robots to date are tiny? Is it just for cost or what? To me, it seems that most people will consider these things to be an expensive toy, as long as they are the size of a toy.
When the robot can take a verbal command to go to the kitchen and get me a beer, _and_ it is tall enough to reach everything in all the cabinets, then it will be useful.
- Necron69
a soviet cluster of beowolves on that Natilie.
Just as with architecture and automotive engineering task, they need to do robotics with virtual systems, using physics models instead of using hardware.
Boy I can't wait until i can get my own Marilyn Monroebot!
The RoboCup 2008 world competition just finished in Suzhou, China -- new this year was a league where all the teams must use the Nao robots. The top two teams were from the University of Newcastle (Australia) and a combined Carnegie Mellon/Georgia Tech team. The final game was scoreless and decided by penalty kicks. Full results are here:
http://www.tzi.de/4legged/bin/view/Website/NaoResults2008
I wasn't at the competition but it's clear due to the scores that the league is still in its infancy, with scores being few and far between. As with any humanoid robot, falling over is a huge problem. I'm sure there will be some videos of the competition online once all the teams get home and have time to edit and upload them.
Here's a video of the robot walking, from the 2008 RoboCup US Open (where there was no competition but a couple small demos for the public.)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=N7USdkA0My8
....can't......lolcats....too....strong....
I can has robot NAO?! ^.^
*gigglefits*
You are referring to this recent bit of news. The current official figure is, actually, about $7.22 million (you don't remember right).
However, it is not set by the US government — the government simply researches, what "we the people" are willing to do (how much they are willing to spend, rather) to avoid risks to our health/life. For example, an American, wishing to travel from New York to Boston, can take either a train (about $100 one way) or a bus ($15). The highway vehicles are inherently riskier, but much cheaper. The number of people taking them anyway gives an idea, how much "an average Joe" is valuing their own life.
By combining various such examples it is possible to come up, with the cost, that's used to determine, for example, whether a particular public policy is worth the expense. See the linked article for more — it discusses both the concept itself and the (usual) condemnations of the current administration for "cooking the books"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Don't Date Robots!
Are they nuts?
That android:
http://arxivblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/nao.jpg
Is not nearly hot enough for that price!
This is what we want:
http://www.universeguide.com/Pictures/RommieFace.jpg
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I clicked the link only because I mistaken Paris as Pris, the entrainment model...
I strongly disagree. As the developed world ages (greater fraction of the population living longer and being older), it will be EXTREMELY expensive to take care of them, UNLESS we can have home robotic assistants. And for them to work, it will be important for them to look human so as to comfort the elderly.
In preparation for this, I have half-jokingly made an agreement with my mom whereby she promises that if I ever "hire" her a "home care assistant", she will only "tip" the "woman" we hired with checks, rather than cash.
Interestingly enough, I estimated them costing in the $15,000 range, just what they're exptected to in the article, which is quite a bargain for taking care of elderly sick parents! It notes, properly, that they'll get cheaper, but the kind I'm referring to will also have to have a host of medical diagnostics and surveillance equipment (the former, of course, vehemently opposed by asshole doctors that claim it will be unsafe but really just want their cut), as well as e.g. bathing capabilities.
Give it ten years though, and only legal barriers will stand in the way.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Guess what. It's just not true. The universe and nature in general doesn't give a damn about us.
That is why I hold to a personal God. One distant, or absent doesn't help the situation.
As for the things you described, those are just animals and insects acting on instinct, defense and hunger.
Awesome, one step closer to the "ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY" !! http://roboeco.com/oan
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
I rather use a robot like this for telepresence. Wish it have stereoscopic vision and not be too slow walking (if it is). AI only needed to assist moving around.
it's your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
We are sexy, sexy Von Neumann machines.
PS - Amazing how there's an appropriate xkcd for almost any slashdot discussion. There could be a corallary to Godwin's Law at play here.
...with its Lithium-ion-battery-based Humanoid Suicide Bomber-bot.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Share and enjoy! .. sounds a bit sick when taken within the context of the parent's request.
The NAO isn't cheap-- that $15000 "is only the first installment". Teams wanting to use that unfortunate winner of the RoboCup tender have to pay almost as much again for the CLOSED-SOURCE SDK and training courses /per programmer/. There were fully free-software tender nominations that were only marginally more expensive (initially, and no hidden charges afterwards), and the predominately University-based researchers just wondered what the hell was going on for NAO to win the RoboCup contract.
As for the claim of $6000 each 'in mass production'... I can't see the separately-sourced high-quality motors that cost ~$500 each, making up 90% of the materials cost, dropping massively in price when they're already in mass production.
The Nao is crap, dont waste $6000 on it.
As Falkkin said, it was used in this year's RoboCup.
While not on the team myself, I spent a lot of time in the last 6 months in the same lab as UNSW's RoboCup team. The Nao's were extremely troublesome. Limbs fall out from the softest fall, the battery lasts about 15 minutes, several times our robots decided they didn't like booting any more and Alderbaran took months to replace them, even in the air-conditioned lab they would frequently overheat and we had to remove their head casing just to get them working for a reasonable period of time...
Oh and the battery can't charge while it's running off AC power.
Basically it's a piece of shit. The old Sony Aibo's that used to be used in the competition were much more robust.
I read almost all the comments thus far and not a single overlord joke! I, for one, welcome new robot overlord jokes!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Before I buy one, I'd like to know how strong and how heavy it is, and in which programming languages it has been programmed. I don't want to be accidentally killed by it, because the software is buggy.
That's not a joke, I'm serious about this. Once they start to build heavy robots for home use, they better program them in languages like ADA or Eiffel and run the software through a complete set of test suites, or someone will die sooner or later.
Nao means brain in Chinese. Seriously.
Computers obey me.
They are feigning weakness to build a sense of Security.
"They are weak robots" they will say.
"They can't take over the world if their arms fall off" The news commentators will proclaim.
Yeah you whole lot will be kicking yourselves when the robot hordes take over the streets and start stealing old peoples medicine for fuel.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...