Walking through the exhibition in the AAL Forum in Vienna, I was impressed by a new robot development performed by a French company called Aldebaran Robotics.
After 3 years of research, Aldebaran Robotics has developed NAO - a 58-cm biped robot. It is a unique combination of hardware and software in a great design. Nao stands tall in all points amongst its robotic brethren. Platform agnostic, it can be programmed and controlled using all available platforms. The hardware has been built from the ground up with the latest technologies providing great fluidity in its movements and offering a wide range of sensors.
The programming environment called Choregraphe® was developed by Aldebaran Robotics to allow rapid development of complex behaviors by novice users while providing the ability to have a fine control of motions for demanding programmers. Its intuitive graphical interface makes the difference: it allows you to get started by dragging and dropping pre-defined behavior boxes from the Box library and link them together to compose your own Nao behavior in the flow diagram. Once familiar with the software, you can compose your own boxes, play with time scheduled programming and execute your behaviors: on real Nao via Wi-Fi, via Choregraphe’s 3D window or by using advanced simulators such as Microsoft Robotics Developers Studio and Cyberbotics Webots.
You can see Nao in action in two videos that I saw at the conference:
http://www.aldebaran-robotics.com/download/NaoAcademicsV3.mov
http://www.aldebaran-robotics.com/download/NAOPlaytime.mov
The use of NAO as a companion for elderly people seemed to me the most effective but last week, travelling to Milan, I discovered an astonishing use: in San Raffaele Hospital – one of the leading University Hospitals in Italy, several NAOs are used to train diabetic children to take the insulin injections. The training is so effective that children are showing total adherence to the treatment and become even “proud” to have such condition which allows them to be seen and filmed with the robots. The films are than showed (with the parents and children consent) to the classmates who discover that having diabetes and being obliged to treat yourself is not such a fatality but an excellent occasion to learn a new healthy behavior and even play with robots… This is one of the most sensible proof that I found on how technology can change delivery of healthcare…
Nao at the Doctors'TV
Discover how the Nao robot can help children develop their social interaction skills by providing predictable play and repetitive behaviors. Click on the picture below to watch the video.
Dr Octavian Purcarea
Global Solutions Manager
Worldwide Health Team
Microsoft Corp.