NAO6 Programmable Humanoid Robot – Aldebaran’s Robot Equipped with NAOqi 2.8

Thanks to the progress made on Pepper, NAO6 is more powerful than the last version. This version of NAO has different areas of improvement, such as power, vision, audio, movement, resistance and security. The humanoid robot’s new motherboard is paired up with the latest version of NAOqi 2.8 to give better performance (Initialization Time, Update Time, Ethernet, and WiFi).

NAO6: Improved Functionalities

Various hardware and software improvements have been made to the NAO robot to make it more powerful.

System Features

The boot loader UEFI and kernel Linux 4.4 64-bit allow faster, safer and more secure booting. However, developers who use external libraries in C++ or Linux will have to recompile them into a 64-bit architecture.

A new software architecture has been set up with more safety for the robot.

• Yocto, the new build system allows the separation of the embedded OS Linux and the application’s building blocks. There is no change for developers in Python but users of external libraries will have to recompile their applications.
• The transition from open CV2 to open CV3 improves the vision performance and picture quality.
• LoLA (Low-Level Abstraction) is embedded in the robot and replaces DCM. This means that all DCM-Dependent Applications will cease to work. However, with LoLA, the software is now modular and can be removed by developers.

Since the 2.1 version, the Choregraphe software has evolved its functionality and ergonomics control.

New panels were added

• The Project Objects Panel: shows the complete boxes tree of the current behaviour and navigation between boxes is easier.
• The Active Content Panel: lists running behaviours, services and dialogue topics that you can stop and restart. The active panel keeps a brief history of the last active content.
• The Inspector Panel: gives quicker access to all the objects’ properties with a 3D preview in the case of an animation box.

NAO’s Panels Have Been Improved

• The Box Library has been completely reorganised to be far more efficient for your routines.
• Robot Applications now display better Behaviors, Dialogs and Services.
• Language Dialog now supports 22 languages: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Mandarin Taiwan, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
• Choice Box: This is now far simpler. This box is easier to use due to an important optimization.

New Tools Have Been Added to NAO

• Memory Backup is a tool to save robots’ data. As the factory reset used to remove all APIs, memory backup now allows you to restore them.
• Localized Text is a new workflow to translate applications in an easier, faster way. The method is simplified with a new property in the “SAY” box and a tool provided with the framework that will gather all sentences you need to translate in a ts. File.
• Auto Save and Recovery features allow you to recover programming modifications easily in case of a system crash. This is made possible via a temporary file where your modifications are written automatically.

Autonomy features

• NAO6 will benefit from Pepper’s autonomous features like the diagnosis effects, the sleep mode and other autonomous abilities that make it look alive.
• The “qicli info” feature is activated so that you can test things very quickly on the head of the robot, without having to code a new application or a script.

All of these new elements improve the audio and vision of the NAO Robot

• NAO6 takes advantage of all the Dialog and QiChat enhancements including a semantic engine (knowledge API + sentence structure) that allows the robot to give clearer and more coherent answers.
• Interaction with the robot is much improved.
• New cameras improve tracking and people detection performances.
• Now, you can run fully supported dual streams from the top and bottom cameras.

Contents of the programmable humanoid NAO6 box

• 1 programmable NAO6 Humanoid Robot
• 1 Software Suite Licenses (including Choregraphe, Monitor and SDK)
• 2 years warranty

PLEASE NOTE: The NAO6 Humanoid robot is available in only one colour: dark grey.