ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

The little robot shown in the linked video is called Nao, developed by a company called Aldebaran in France. Alok Jha of the The Guardian writes that this robot 'develops and displays emotions' and 'form bonds' with people depending on the person's mood. It looks to me as though the people at Aldebaran have programmed a few emotional postures and that those emotional postures are triggered by very specific cues from the user. This falls short of the claim.

Click Here to View the Video, Necessary Since the Guardian Disabled Embedding.

The emotional posturing is very neat, and I would guess that works as a usability tool. I also also impressed with the range of motion and motility that they were able to achieve with Nao. It seems a little clunky and I don't particularly like the shuffling, but it's better than I can do.

YouTube has a video which better displays the motion of the robot. The YouTube video, presumably an advertising piece for Aldebaran also shows the robot lying. I don't imagine this is part of the package for sale.