Pet robot

Friday, October 7th, 2016

  • Leia meets NAO, an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot developed by French robotics company Aldebaran Robotics. At Les Artisanales de Chartres, meeting NAO put to rest any worries that I might have had about inhuman ‘Robocops‘ or legions of Terminator robots unleashing ‘Judgement day’ upon us all, just yet.

    NAO is cute for a few minutes, but it’s like meeting a toddler that only moves in slow motion. If this robot was remarkable in any way I would say it was remarkable how useless it seemed to be. It could walk, but if you want something to walk, buy a hamster! It could dance, like a dad, and it could catch objects if you consider putting objects in its hands to be catching them.

    With artificial intelligence making leaps and strides that are as worrying as they are amazing, it seems that human-like software is much more advanced than the hardware. NAO is as much a robot as an Action Man is a soldier. It’s a toy and not a very good one at that! Yes, it’s cute, but even then, hamsters are more so.