ALDEBARAN

Their core work

Aldebaran is the French robotics company behind the iconic NAO and Pepper humanoid robots, acquired by SoftBank Group in 2015 (now operating as SoftBank Robotics Europe). Their core work is designing and manufacturing social and service robots intended for direct human interaction — in retail, education, healthcare, and public spaces. Within H2020, they contributed their robot platforms and human-robot interaction expertise to research consortia advancing socially intelligent robotics across multiple application domains.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Aldebaran's H2020 involvement spans 2016–2018 start dates, a relatively concentrated window. Earlier projects (APRIL, L2TOR, MuMMER) focused on general social robotics applications — personal interaction, language tutoring, and entertainment in public spaces. Later projects (CARESSES, CROWDBOT, ANIMATAS) show a shift toward more specialized challenges: cultural sensitivity in robot behavior, safe autonomous navigation among people, and deeper educational interaction with social capabilities. The trajectory suggests a move from demonstrating robot presence in human environments toward making that presence contextually intelligent and socially adaptive.

Aldebaran is moving from robots that simply interact with people toward robots that understand cultural context, navigate unpredictable environments, and adapt their social behavior — signaling interest in real-world deployment readiness.

How they like to work

Aldebaran participates exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a commercial company contributing its robot platforms and engineering expertise to research-led consortia. With 44 unique partners across 14 countries in just 6 projects, they operate in large, diverse consortia (averaging 7+ partners per project). This pattern indicates they serve as the go-to industry platform provider that academic and research partners build upon.

Aldebaran has collaborated with 44 distinct partners across 14 countries through 6 projects, indicating broad European reach and consistent demand for their robot platforms. Their network spans academic institutions, research centers, and technology companies working on human-robot interaction.

What sets them apart

Aldebaran is one of very few European companies that manufactures commercially available humanoid social robots (NAO, Pepper), making them a rare industry partner that can supply actual hardware platforms for research projects. Unlike most robotics labs that build one-off prototypes, Aldebaran brings production-grade robots that can be deployed, replicated, and scaled. For any consortium needing a real social robot — not just a simulation — Aldebaran is among the most established choices in Europe.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MuMMER
  Largest funded project (EUR 958,750), deploying a multimodal entertainment robot in a real shopping mall — a high-visibility public deployment.
• CARESSES
  Unique intersection of transcultural nursing and robotics, developing culture-aware robots for elderly care across Japan and Europe.
• CROWDBOT
  Tackled the hard unsolved problem of safe autonomous robot navigation in dense, unpredictable human crowds.