NAO Becomes the Widely Used Humanoid Robot for Learning STEM

Last October, NAO was named the best robot for education as part of the "Robot Hall of Fame^®" Competition organized by Carnegie Mellon.

ALDEBARAN Robotics, a global leader in humanoid robotics and academic partner of some of the most prestigious universities, schools, and laboratories, is proud to announce that NAO is the most widely used humanoid robot for learning STEM and is additionally open to extra-curricular activities in raising awareness of the sciences in museums, and more broadly, to core businesses of the future.

Two years following its introduction into STEM classes, the number of secondary-education institutions that have NAOs has exceeded 200 across the world.

NAO is an interactive, fully programmable humanoid robot which is being continuously developed and which meets the requirements of educational methods that are based on experimentation and analysis. From learning about robotics to the development of STEM skills, NAO has already proved itself in classes of all levels, and since August 2012, even as part of a summer school.

This was the case of the Connecticut Science Center which uses NAO in the framework of raising STEM awareness, by means of specialist workshops aimed at young people aged between 6 and 18 years old.

Its user-friendly programming environment favours learning about programming, in addition to the illustration of abstract concepts, mathematical theories, the principles of physics, electronics, or computing science.

Timothy Gifford, researcher at UConn, and CEO of Movia Robotics is a partner of the Connecticut Science Center. He is persuaded by NAO's educational potential, and has therefore committed himself to promoting and encouraging an educational solution based on NAO. Along with parallel workshops dedicated to learning about STEM, NAO welcomes young visitors at the entrance to the museum, and which can also interact with them via a graphic interface specially designed for this purpose.

"NAO has been a great tool that supports our workshops. It is a fully realized and implemented robot that is ready to go right out of the box. Some students are more interested in applied robotics than in constructing a robot from a kit. NAO has provided us with an exciting tool to teach students robotics, to introduce robotics related concepts and show how robots can be applied in the real world," explains Timothy Gifford.

ALDEBARAN Robotics Founder and Chairman Bruno Maisonnier says: "With NAO in the schools, students are faced with tangible applications in innovation. A humanoid robot is packed with the latest technology, bringing together the most avant-garde science and techniques. One just has to applaud this raising of awareness happening throughout the world."

In a bid to energise science and technology curricula, and to better implement its teaching solution in the classroom, ALDEBARAN Robotics intends to provide teachers with content that is suitable to their course programme, starting next December. It will be a turnkey solution complete with a new product offer, the NAO Ankle Kit. This NAO sub-assembly will allow students to study and understand better how the world's most used humanoid robot functions at both the mechanical and electronic levels.