Nao Hacked to Groom Your Pussy Cat

Taylor Veltrop has implemented quite an amazing hack of an Aldebaran  NAO robot.
The system consists of a NAO, a Kinect sensor, two Wiimotes, a treadmill, a camera mounted on Nao's head, and a head-mounted immersive display system for the user that also control's NAO's head and neck. With everything in place, the user (Veltrop)can walk forward and the robot walks forward. Veltrop can turn, and NAO turns. 
This is a remarkable feat of robotics and worthwhile noting just how much of this was accomplished based on off-the-shelf sensors combined with some intense cleverness. In just the last few years, the availability of cheap and open source software and hardware has enabled people without giant research budgets to do some amazing things that just haven't been possible before, and with sensors like the next version of Kinect  to look forward to, the near future is going to be awfully exciting for robots and humans and cats.

This is the culmination of my last year's work. I control the robot's arms through the Kinect and Wii remotes. I control the robot's navigation through the Kinect and treadmill. I control the robot's head through the head mounted display (HMD). I also see through the robot's eyes with the HMD.
After doing this exercise, it became apparent that the next feature to add is hearing and speaking through the robot. Luckily both the NAO and my HMD have microphones and speakers so this shouldn't be too difficult.

More NAO work from Taylor:


IEEE Spectrum