Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Ms Buffard's students
Thank you very much!
Ladies and gentlemen, meet NAO.
Robots are a childhood dream.
Ir's a dream that began when I was very young,
when I was failing at school, when I would come last in all the tests,
when I was send away from a class, when I repeated another.
Until one day I met a curate - I was repeating my first form then -
and he said: "Ah, I know a child who was like you, and he ended up doing Polytechnique".
I didn't know what Polytechnique was, but he gave me self-confidence, he reassured me
and deep inside, I was thinking: "Anyway, I don't care, I'll do Polytechnique".
I still didn't know what it was.
But somehow it reconnected me.
A little later, in a station concourse, I found a science-fiction book,
of little interest. But I found in it a world of technology, gadgets, electronics, robots
and that's when it clicked. That's when I thought: I want to make robots! I will make robots!
I badgered my parents so that they enrolled me into an electronics correspondance course
- which was not easy, since the teachers talked about it, would summon them regularly
to explain them that I wasn't really made for studies,
but that didn't matter,
there were very good manual jobs - which is true by the way -
but that was useless.
I got my own way. I followed electronics correspondance courses,
and it reconnected me.
I studied what was required to go into robotics,
and that's how I embarked on the robot adventure.
In parralel with my job,
I spent my time developping robots, you can see some of them here.
I wanted to explore this new world.
The NAO adventure began in 2005 with half a dozen enthusiasts like me.
We met and decided
that our passions could be turned into a professional adventure.
We were more pretentious than that, we wanted to revolutionize the world then.
But, that was 5, 6 years ago.
And we each started tinkering and developing robots
in our living room - I remember that for me, it was in a cupboard.
What is a robot, by the way?
I was the first questions we asked ourselves.
We asked it to the people around us.
What is a robot? What is it for?
And we got quite converging answers.
A robot is a little mechanical guy, something that can understand us
and especially something that must be at our service.
And that gave us our guideline:
a robot is a humanoid, serving people, which must interact with us all.
There you are!
That first element what led us eventually
to make the robots you can see here.
We went though a lot of stages.
Well! What is NAO after all?
I feel like characterizing it as follows: NAO is precursor.
A precursor, a little like PCs and microcomputers were, it was said at the time,
30 years ago, when they were useless, expensive,
that we had to convince our girlfriend, our spouse,
that we wanted to blow all our money to buy those computers,
that we would seal up the fireplace because it was so big that we didn't know where to put it
and that hundreds of thousands of people driven by this passion
decided to embrace computing,
to write the first applications,
and some invented games, speadsheets and word processors.
They were the ones who revolutionized PCs. They were the ones who revolutionized computing.
The goal is the same with NAO.
It's happening in the same way at the moment.
We know we are at the dawn of something big with robots and NAO is a precursor,
It's a platform we can explore, use, put in everybody's hands,
so that everyone who wants to try can.
That's why we made our robot easy to program,
you must be able to make it do what you want, otherwise it's no fun.
And it must be robust.
Ouch!
Come on, it's not so bad, don't sulk!
It was just to show you were a strong robot.
Come on...
I am not a robot, my name is NAO.
What are you, then?
I am a personal assistant destined to help humans.
Why?
I will answer that question.
As you can see it on the chart behind me,
the age pyramid in Northern countries will tend toward a lack of balance between the young and the old.
Japan is the best example.
You see Bruno? I'm helping you with your presentation.
Thank you.
Indeed, we're having fun but we have a problem or repartition evolution
in many countries between the working population and the non-working population which will become a problem.
That's a very very complex subject,
and that's an issue to which robots can bring some solutions
And that's one of the reasons driving the whole robotics to try and change this paradigm.
NAO, you're supposed to help me here...
Wikipedia definition:
a paradigme is a representation of the world, a way to see things,
a coherent model for a vision of the world that rests on a defined basis.
You too can be really boring when you talk. (Laughter)
Well... But indeed, we have applications for robots.
And a robot like this one is both an object able to act in the world,
that is able to move, walk, grab things,
but above all it's a connected object, connected into the whole digital world.
It's an object that can help a visually-impaired person, to go and get them though text files,
get them magazines, texts, newspapers and read them to them.
it's an object that can help handicapped people to handle remote controls or to control a TV set.
It's an object that can help old people who are alone and need to be accompanied;
So, in these domains of society, it too can change paradigms.
NAO, you're supposed to help me here again...
Ah? Thanks to me, you know what that means!
You're showing off!
(Laughter)
It has not been programmed yet not to be heavy. Please forgive us, but it will be done later.
Well... But NAO is a revolution.
NAO is a strong evolution.
Sure it is small.
And because it's small, it can act on important and strong things.
So, there are a number of other robots being developped.
Here you can see ROMEO.
But there are many teams working on robots around the world,
so that they can, in retirement homes and hospital services,
help get fallen old people back on their feet,
work in mine fields, etc.
Robots are growing, becoming more numerous,
and becoming really useful.
Finally, robots could be characterized that way.
We can say that robots are a new mechanical species, it's a new kind of machine.
It's a new species at mankind's service.
So when I say that, it seems a little futuristic,
it seems a little theoretical, it seems a distant future,
But I want to give two examples illustrating that in a conctrete way.
The first one is autistic children.
Autistic children have a brain shaped in the same way,
not totally formed,
and they find it very difficult to interact with people.
They find it hard to interact.
And yet, they have a big appetite for technology,
they trust technology and interact with it much more easily.
And at Notre-Dame University in Indiana, they use it,
they use it at Pitié-Salpétrière in Paris,
they use it in the Netherlands,
where doctors use robots to assist an educator for autistic children.
And autistic children feel comfortable with rituals, with repetitions,
when you wake up in the morning, you always put on your right sock then your left sock,
and robots are rather good at that sort of rituals and the likes.
So, there are already actual applications that are explored right now to help autistic children, with robots.
I will take another application,
another example which also seems strong to me,
it concerns teaching English.
You know that Korea is a country that exports a lot.
Korea is a country, however, where people speak English very badly,
and it causes them a lot of problems in their professional life.
The Korean government decided to change that, and to invest massiveley in the teaching of English.
So they do it with teachers, they do it at different levels.
And they have decided to do it with robots in primary schools.
Thus, robots are the assistants of the teachers of English - they assist teachers, they are not the teachers -
but the assistants of the teachers of English in primary schools.
And we found something fantastic, it is that robots don't judge.
If you speak poorly, you pronounce poorly, it will ask you to repeat,
but after the 125th time, it will continue to ask you to repeat,
and it will not cause emotions, tensions, difficulties, whereas it happens with a teacher.
And taking these two examples, I want to highlight -
here we see Notre-Dame University in Indiana, that works with a robot and autistic children.
I have seen an application there, on autistic children, which is fantastic.
An autistic child who was unable to interact with people, who was alone in a room,
whenever someone came into the room,
Bam! His eyes would diverge.
He was uncomfortable, and he could not accept being with people.
He never hugged anyone. He was a little shut within himself.
And by putting - it happened in Paris - by putting two robots,
one into the hands of the child, and one into the hands of the doctor who was nearby, who accompanied him,
and the doctor would repeat the gestures that the child was making with his robot.
There is a kind of resonance development,
there is a kind of tuning, synchronization,
we don't know what happened.
After a while, the child threw the robot away,
came to have a big hug with the nearby doctor.
Something we had never seen before.
That's it.
What I want to tell you is that we have a new species that is happening.
We have a new species of machine
that will provide where us men cannot necessarily provide for structural reasons.
That's what is happening with robotics.
There is a revolution coming.
The pioneers and champions of the world at this moment are French,
and if I had one thing to say about that,
if I had a message to leave you with,
it is let's accept whatever good technology can bring us,
let's enter NAO's or robots' world,
and let hundreds of thousands of people come to explore the new possibilities of robotics,
and turn these opportunities into actual applications and real help to the various people.
Thank you, and thank you for NAO.
(Applause)