Nao (robot)

Nao (pronounced now) is an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot developed by Aldebaran (formerly known as Aldebaran Robotics and also SoftBank Robotics Europe while owned by SoftBank), a now defunct French robotics company from Paris. The robot's development began with the launch of Project Nao in 2004. On 15 August 2007, Nao replaced Sony's robot dog Aibo as the robot used in the RoboCup Standard Platform League (SPL), an international robot soccer competition. The Nao was used in RoboCup 2008 and 2009, and the NaoV3R was chosen as the platform for the SPL at RoboCup 2010. Several versions of the robot have been released since 2008. The Nao Academics Edition was developed for universities and laboratories for research and education purposes. It was released to institutions in 2008, and was made publicly available by 2011. Various upgrades to the Nao platform have since been released, including the 2011 Nao Next Gen, the 2014 Nao Evolution and the 2018 Nao6. Nao robots have been used for research and education purposes in numerous academic institutions worldwide. As of 2024, over 13,000 Nao units are in use in more than 70 countries.