Integration of 3-D Perception and Autonomous Computation on a Nao Humanoid Robot

The humanoid robot Nao is a great platform for robotics research, in particular it provides an important testbed for computer vision, machine learning and human robot interface. Nevertheless, its limited sensorization and computation power reduces its autonomy severely. To overcome some of these limitations, in this paper we describe the integration of a RGB-D camera together with a mini-PC, into the Nao robot. Our objective is to get a Nao robot being able to carry out autonomously (onboard) all the tasks that involve 3D environment perception. As an example we used two applications: (1) mimic of human movements, (which will be used on learning by demonstration), and (2) RTABmap SLAM algorithm. Finally, we also tested the Nao's walking stability when it was equipped with all the new elements.