Humanoid Robot Nao Learns to Drive Its Own Car

Robots have proven to be not that great at driving cars. Robot cars are just fine at driving themselves, but that's much different than putting a robot (humanoid orotherwise) behind the wheel of a vehicle designed for humans.

The very fancy and expensive robots at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials had a tough time trying to make it work, but for Aldebaran's humanoid Nao, it's a cinch, with his brand new little kid (or little robot) sized electric BMW Z4 from RobotsLab, a seller of educational robots based in San Francisco, Calif.

Nao is driving the car completely autonomously. Or, it might be more accurate to say that the car is sort of driving itself, relying on a laser rangefinder mounted underneath to avoid obstacles and send steering commands to the robot.

.. read more at IEEE Spectrum, at RobotsLAB or at Tech Crunch