Understanding Autonomous Life settings

Autonomous Life

Autonomous Life is the key element making NAO alive and responsive. To be fully effective, it requires to be combined with Basic Channel and Installed Activities.

To activate or deactivate Autonomous Life, see: Switching Autonomous life on and off.

Default settings

By default, when you receive your NAO, only the Autonomous Life is installed and turned on:

Alive, but deaf and dumb: Autonomous Life: ON - Basic Channel: OFF

On startup: If he is on his feet, NAO gets up, If he is sitting, NAO remains seated. In all cases, NAO wags slightly, and seems to be waiting for something to happen. But he cannot understand your questions and has no conversation skills.

Recommended settings

We recommend to subscribe to the Basic Channel.

Alive and responsive: Autonomous Life: ON - Basic Channel: ON

On startup: If he is on his feet, NAO gets up, If he is sitting, NAO remains seated. Then, NAO orientates its head towards human, and is able to react to basic stimuli, such as sounds, movements, or tactile contacts. If you stay away, NAO does not talk, but looks for people willing to talk and interact. If you come closer, NAO listens and tries to make a relevant answer. For further details, see: Interacting with NAO.

Basic Channel

Subscribing to the Basic Channel will install several items on NAO, providing mainly dialog abilities, but also push and fall recovery abilities, and useful sounds gathered in the SoftBank Robotics soundSet.

Subscribing to the Basic Channel is mandatory to fully use Autonomous life, and more specifically, to run Applications using Trigger sentences, or SoftBank Robotics soundSet.

For further details, see:

• Subscribing to a Channel.
• For developers: Behavior property list, Soundset.

Installed Activities

Additionally, Applications can be installed, from the NAO Apps Store and/or from Choregraphe.

For further details, see: Retrieving applications.

Applications may content Solitary and/or Interactive Activities.

Depending on the launch conditions of these Activities, you see them either autonomously launched at some point, or explicitly launched by voice when you talk to him.

For further details, see: Launching an Activity.

The more applications you installed on NAO, the richer his living behavior will be.

What if I do not want autonomous life

You may disable Autonomous Life:

Still and motionless: Autonomous Life: OFF - Basic Channel: OFF

In this state, you can use NAO as an experimental tool, to test a new program or to study a very specific skill of your robot. But if you want to use or to create interactive Applications, you should create and test them with the recommended settings.