We have mentioned several times (read One small step for Nao but one giant leap for French robotics) the efforts of French startup Aldebaran Robotics to design an affordable and capable humanoid robot. The company has been working on the robot since at least 2005 and the result of their efforts is the Nao humanoid robot which has begun to gain acceptance as a viable research robot with its introduction to RoboCup in 2007 (read New Nao at Robocup 2007.) The company has also developed a simulated version of Nao that can be used with Microsoft's Robotics Studio application.

Aldebaran has big plans for their creation. They want to make it a true companion robot for families. They hope that in the future, Nao will be customizable (they have recruited two Parisian design school designers to give Nao its current form) with the ability to adopt to its environment and learn new skills. I'd say that we are far from having an affordable robot with such capabilities but Nao is certainly on the right path. The current Nao model can walk, get up from ground after falling over, kick a ball, and grasp small objects. It still has a long way to go before it can perform fluid motions like the now defunct SONY QRIO but it should be there in another 3-5 years (this is my widely unsubstantiated guess.)

At any rate, Nao is a wonderful robot and the video below showcases some of its abilities including interaction with people, visual object recognition, object manipulation, and interaction with other robots.