France’s humanoid robot Romeo – Big but not dangerous

Project Romeo is an ambitious undertaking by a coalition of companies and national labs in France to develop by the end of 2011 a functional prototype of a humanoid robot that can assist the elderly and visually-challenged people at home. The goal is to develop a 1.2-1.5 meter (47-59 inches) high bipedal robot that humans can communicate with by voice and gesture and which can help a person get up in case of a fall.

 

The organizing company in this project is Aldebaran Robotics, which develops and sells the smaller humanoid robot Nao. GetRobo talked about the goal and challenges of this 10 million Euro (\1.3 billion, $14 million) project with Rodolphe Gelin, Head of Cooperative Projects at Aldebaran, who is the leader of this project. The following is an edited version of the phone interview and first appeared on Robot Watch in Japanese. (Photo: Rodolphe Gelin with Nao)

 

First of all, can you give us a brief overview of Project Romeo?

 

The idea of Project Romeo was born in March 2008 and the project actually started in January 2009. The goal of the project is to develop a functional prototype of a personal assistant humanoid robot by the end of 2011. The robot is meant to be helpful for elderly people that may have cognitive problems. Also we will be working closely with the Vision Institute (Institut de la Vision) and it’s patients so that Romeo will be able to assist visually-challenged people.

Romeo will be able to assist these people when they are alone at home. It will be able to fetch objects in another room and also assist a person to walk or get up from a chair.

The project is led by the French Cap Digital, which is a coalition of companies, labs and institutions in Paris and the surrounding Ile-de-France region, set up to cooperate in leading innovation and building a competitive industry. There are 13 partners participating in Project Romeo - 5 companies, 7 national labs and the Vision Institute.

 

The Ile-de-France region, the city of Paris and the DGCIS, which is a department within the Ministry of Economy, will fund about half of the 10 million Euros. The rest will be provided by the partners in the form of investment and human capital .

We plan to come out with our first prototype by the end of 2010. Right now we are in the specification phase. Four engineers are currently working with me at Aldebaran and I would say one at each of our partners.

How did this project come about?

 

Bruno Maisonnier, founder and CEO of Aldebaran, had the idea that France can be a leading country in robotics. He wanted to build a human-sized robot as a demonstration of what France is capable to do. And to accomplish that he thought it was very important to bring together people in robotics from different organizations. So he teamed up with Cap Digital to come up with this huge project and was able to secure funding from the public sector.

 

We think that combining the experience and technology that Aldebaran has accumulated to develop Nao with the expertise of the other partners, we will be able to accomplish our goal.

 

By the way, “Romeo” does not mean anything. It sounds like a person’s name and makes the robot more lovable. Names that end in “-eo” are popular in France these days. It sounds new and high-tech.