Aldebaran team just announced a new software release for NAO.

Here is the announcement and the list of changes:

It's been one year since we published the last official maintenance release for NAO (1.14.5).

As you may know, we worked hard (and secretely) to release Pepper, and NAO Evolution.

But those two robots needed a new software that Rocks !

So, here's the result of more than two years of work of our software team: NAOqi 2.1.0.19 is out!

To begin with some bad news:

- 1.14 Behaviors are not compatible with NAOqi 2

- This version ends the support of Geode CPU Robots, you'll need an Atom processor to use it.

If you can't wait, you can download everything you need from the Resources section:

https://community.aldebaran.com/resources/

And read the documentation:

https://community.aldebaran.com/doc/2-1/

So, what's new in this NAOqi Software suite version?

Well, so much that we have difficulties to create the changelog. 

Here is some changes

• ALAutonomousLife: NAO is now alive and this module will bring you possibilities to improve it.
• Huge NAOqi core refactoring has been done
• New Application Delivery System
  • Complete rewrite of the Store and new address: https://cloud.aldebaran-robotics.com
  • Over The Air System Updates, localized downloads, and much more to come.

• Javascript bindings
• New Java bindings
• New Robot Web Page: The old one is still available for now at http://nao.local/advanced
• ALDialog: The ALDialog module allows you to endow your robot with conversational skills
• ALAnimatedSpeech: The ALAnimatedSpeech module allows you to make the robot talk in an expressive way.
• ALVisualSpaceHistory: keeps track of the head movements of the robot to build a timestamped map of the head positions.
• ALSegmentation3D: requires a robot with a 3D sensor. Extracts the objects present in the field of view of the robot.
• New tracking system
  • ALFaceTracker and ALRedBallTracker are now deprecated. They are replaced by a new and more generic module: ALTracker.
  • ALTracker module allows the robot to track different targets (red ball, face, landmark, etc) using different means (head only, whole body, move, etc).
• New extractors for People Perception
  • ALBasicAwareness is a simple way to make the robot establish and keep eye contact with people.
  • ALPeoplePerception is an extractor which keeps track of the people around the robot and provides basic information about them. It gathers visual information from RGB cameras and a 3D sensor if available.
  • ALEngagementZones allows you to detect if someone is approaching the robot, or moving away, using the concept of engagement zones.
  • ALGazeAnalysis allows you to analyze the direction of the gaze of a detected person, in order to know if he/she is looking at the robot.
  • ALSittingPeopleDetection updates every person with the information of whether he or she is sitting (on a chair for example) or standing.
  • ALWavingDetection allows you to detect if a person is moving in order to catch the robot’s attention (for example waving at the robot).
• Core
  • ALWorldRepresentation is a module dedicated to the long term storage of data about generic objects. It allows you to persistently store some data, but also to make some generic queries on the stored data with intelligent criterions.
  • ALSystem provides primitives that can be used to configure the system and perform operations such as shutting down or rebooting.
  • ALPreferenceManager allows managing the robot preferences. Preferences are used to store, among other, all the settings for the applications running in the robot.
  • Deprecated: ALPreferences
  • ALBehaviorManager partially deprecated
• Motion
  • ALLocalMap: While the reflex Self-collision avoidance makes the robot avoid to hurt himself, activating ALLocalMap makes the robot also avoid to hurt people and things encountered in its external environment.
  • New Diagnosis reflex: Diagnosis effect is a reflex designed to protect the robot and the user in case of a malfunctioning actuator or sensor.
• Vision
  • ALPanoramaCompass: ALPanoramaCompass is a module dedicated to computing the orientation of the robot in a robust manner, using information provided by vision.
  • ALBarcodeReader: ALBarcodeReader scans an image from the camera and looks for a barcode. If a barcode is found in the image, the module tries to decipher it.
  • ALCloseObjectDetection: This module requires a robot with a 3D sensor. ALCloseObjectDetection allows you to detect objects that are too close to the robot to be directly detected by the 3D sensor.
  • ALColorBlobDetection: ALColorBlobDetection is a module that provides a fast 2D vision-based color blob detector.
  • ALMovementDetection: fully reshaped. Allows you to detect movement in the field of view of the robot.
• Sensors
  • ALTouch: The ALTouch module is responsible for raising events when the robot is touched.
  • ALChestButton: Former ALSentinel events: SimpleClickOccured, :DoubleClickOccured and TripleClickOccured are now ALChestButton events
• ALDiagnosis: Allows the robot to detect if there is an hardware trouble (mainly electrical connection).
• Choregraphe
  • Behavior's loading time was divided by at least 3.
  • New Application packages:
    Choregraphe can now produce application Packages (.pkg) out of Behaviors.
    Store application metadata can be edited through project properties. It is stored in the Project as manifest.xml and can be edited in several languages.
    Choregraphe directly installs packages to the Package Manager.
    Behavior Manager is replaced by Application Manager, and shows the whole Application structures and the Behaviors they contain.
    Installed Behaviors cannot anymore be opened directly from Choregraphe, thus preventing users to access easily the sources of your application.
  • World representation in Robot view:
    As the new ALWorldRepresentation module arrives, the Robot view shows the stored objects.
    Motion panel was embedded in the Robot view in order to lighten the layout and now also give information about the selected objects (furniture, people, places...)
    User can set the polling speed for motion and world representation info.
  • Separate Virtual Robot execution: Choregraphe now instantiates a virtual robot in a separate process, thus improving stability.
  • New Dialog script editor: The Script Editor allows you to create Dialog script boxes, an easy way to use ALDialog module.
  • Improved Timeline: The Timeline panel has new functions: Zoom in/out, Play, Stop, Step by step, Move backward.
• Supported Operating Systems: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise) and later, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid) is not anymore supported.
• Python SDK is now Python 2.7 only: Python 2.6 is not supported anymore
• C++ SDK: End of VS2008 support.
• Other:
  • OpenCV updated from 2.3.1a to 2.4.3
  • Switch from lighttpd to Nginx to serve Web Pages.
  • Audio modules are now using PulseAudio on the robot.