Paris, France, September 9st, 2008. The French start-up Gostai (www.gostai.com) and Aldebaran Robotics (www.aldebaran-robotics.com) announce that the Nao robot will be equipped with the latest version of Gostai Urbi universal software platform to offer an extra programming interface.

NAO is the current most evolved humanoid robot available on the market and is already shipping to universities labs that require a cutting edge but affordable development platform. With a computer at its core, it is a unique, evolving and fully programmable platform. Nao is targeting a variety of usage such as education, entertainment, home care or security in a near future.

Currently Nao has been selected by the Robocup committee as the standard league platform and has been be part of the Robocup that took place from July 14th to July 20th in China. Urbi, developed by Gostai, is a highly innovative universal robotics software platform, a kind of “Robot O.S.”, that makes all robots compatible and easy to program.

Urbi is already popular in the Aibo community and compatible with 16 different robots on the market today. “Gostai has been working with Aldebaran Robotics for several years and we are delighted to see this partnership take the limelight. This extraordinarily advanced robot is the perfect choice for people seriously interested in robotics. It follows the footsteps of Aibo, that was our first target for an Urbi platform” says Jean-Christophe Baillie, Gostai’s CEO. “Aldebaran Robotics policy is to integrate today’s best robotics technologies inside Nao, alongside our own advanced software. Urbi was an obvious choice considering its amazing capabilities, advanced features and the large Urbi community that supports it.” says Bruno Maisonnier, Aldebaran Robotics’ CEO.

ALDEBARAN, a Paris-based company, raised 5M€ end of 2007. The first 100 Nao has been shipped in June 2008. Gostai, a Paris-based software company, has raised funding from private investors at the beginning of 2008 (undisclosed amount), and is now working on version 2.0 of Urbi, together with several robotics applications based on Urbi.

Press Contacts

Bastien PARENT: parent@aldebaran-robotics.com

Telephone + 33 1 77 17 37 97
Christophe CORNETTE : press@gostai.com

Telephone + 33 1 45 52 64 80

Reference: aldebaran-robotics.com

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