Our Workforce Development Committee met yesterday at Northeastern University campus in SLU. We watched a demo of a robot named NAO built by the Aldebaran Group based in Paris. NAO is jaw droppingly cool.

NAO is a humanoid robot that can be programmed by kids, adults, coders and non-coders. The fact that NAO stood up from a seated position, waved, pretended to kick a soccer ball, gave a speech and responded to commands was very cool. But the programming interface was the big Aha! Moment for me.

You just drag and drop sequences of objects into a programmatic pert chart of dependent and independent events. Stand is an object. Wave is an object – the choice of the hand is a parameter. Speak is an object – the text for NAO to recite is a parameter. They have hundreds of objects pre-set, from the most basic motions like bend left knee or sensor activations like “turn-camera-on” to complete pre-packaged actions like “wave-a-hand”. If you can code, you can modify the objects. You can also create new objects. You can even write classic programming elements like For-Next loops, Sub Calls, etc.

Who cares? Well, you do – or you should.

We have a deep need to bridge a terrible gap of computer science interest that happens in middle school – when girls drop like flies and many boys and girls start thinking that hitting a baseball or kicking a soccer ball is anathema to coding. NAO is a highly approachable, fun, and above all POWERFUL robot. NAO is a compelling device for students from 5 to 55 try their hand at sequencing commands, and then get sucked in to making NAO do more by modifying those commands, which leads to incremental (rapid) learning of coding skills.

In any educational setting, K-12 or college or technical training center, NAO makes coding fun and interesting for anyone who may be intimidated by or uninterested in programming a laptop or smartphone. NAO is cool for Girls. Sports fans. Black kids. White kids. Rich people. Poor people. Wicked smart students. And those who can only drag and drop objects on a screen or type a few words.

Anyone can code and NAO makes coding compelling. Even a luddite like my mom would feel quite accomplished and even a little exhilarated making a robot do a somersault. And maybe, just maybe, NAO can get thousands more teachers and students eager to become competent coders.

Check out the video here.