Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

The NAO robotics platform has been around for some time, originally developed by Aldebaran and SoftBank, and now by Maxtronics. Its OpenNAO operating system is based on the Gentoo embedded Linux OS, and uses the NAOqi API for autonomous robot control. We also used the OpenCV computer vision library as part of our open source software stack to program our NAO humanoid robot.

In this talk, I will present our work to engineer an autonomous behavior system that fuses real-time vision detection with motion planning and closed-loop control. We implemented a perception-to-action pipeline using NAOqi, OpenCV, and camera and motion calibration to detect targets, estimate relative pose, and drive head movement, walking, and task actions through a finite-state controller. We designed the system for robust target search, alignment, and approach under real hardware constraints. I will present a summary of our work, our results from participation in a robot golf tournament, and some thoughts on using open source to develop next-generation robotics platforms.