Aldebaran Robotics Violet. Paris, 21^st November 2011

Aldebaran Robotics, the specialist in robotics which has already marketed more than 2000 NAO humanoid robots in four corners of the planet in the most prestigious universities and laboratories, now opens a consumer department and is marketing through the brand Violet, Karotz, a multipurpose companion connected to the internet.

In October 2011, Aldebaran Robotics took over the company Violet, the creator of the famous

Nabaztag, the internet-connected rabbit. By acquiring such an icon of the «˜Internet of Objects’, Aldebaran, the specialist in humanoid robots begins their first consumer targeted operations.  With Karotz, the third generation of internet-connected rabbits, the Aldebaran Robotics group intends to democratize the ability to live with a machine and to share a large part of their world vision in which the robot is integrated into the home.

Fabien Bardinet, CEO of Violet, subsidiary of Aldebaran: «With Aldebaran, we share the ineluctable vision that robots can be integrated into daily life. However, to live and interact with a machine is not passive. With Karotz, users have the possibility to experiment immediately with the robot and to establish a new rapport between man and machine. Our goal is to enrich this new relationship, through the balance between interactions and applications, which have to either be entertaining or useful».

The platform of services which is currently available for Karotz is now going to drive a series of new developments within Violet. In terms of innovative robotics research, from now on Aldebaran will be able to benefit from the development of their new generation of communicating objects. Furthermore, Aldebaran will focus on creating new interactions between Violet’s platform of services and NAO in order to establish gateways between the intelligence embedded within NAO and cloud computing.

Fabien Bardinet, deputy CEO of the Aldebaran Robotics group, now takes over the management of Violet as CEO.

Karotz: the multipurpose companion is currently available for 129 euros (£114.99 / $129). More information is available from www.karotz.com