Something Old....

Recently, I was contacted by someone who had just passed the Nao Developers Program selection process. In amongst the things we talk about was the Heathkit Hero robot. The Heathkit unit was one of the inspirational units I craved when I was young but was always outside of my meager budget. Interestingly, the unit has been kept alive by a few dedicated fans who keep a number of units running. In the course of my searching I also came across an old 1983/84 edition of the Computer Chronicles tv show that addressed robotics. It is quite a lot of fun to see what was happening back then in the robotics field and with personal computing. Enjoy, the video is embedded in the rest of the blog article, just click the read more link. You will need Flash to view it (tried it on my iPad and it doesn't work, sorry).

Some people have had problems getting to the embedded video, so here is the link to the original page the video was embedded from: http://www.archive.org/details/Robotics1984

Nao Newscaster by Choksolis

Once again a member of the Nao Developer Program has taken things to a new level. Today, Choksolis showed his new Nao routine for reading the top stories from Google News. Added to this, he has also included the ability for the routine to go out to Google Translate and ensure that the stories can be supported in multiple languages. It is a great addition to the Nao programs and behaviours and has been installed on mine already. Not only is it fun, but as someone who doesn't tend to read newspapers or watch the television, it is really useful too. Here is a great video Choksolis has released showing Nao hosting a multilingual newscast.

Nao Newscaster from nao demo on Vimeo.

Boy Meets Nao #2

Thomas had a lot of fun with Nao