Nadine

Canonical robot record

Overview

Nadine is a lifelike social humanoid robot designed to interact with people through natural conversation, facial expression, and gesture. It is modelled physically on Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, giving it realistic skin, hair, and articulated hands that support human-like movement and grasping.

Despite being grouped here under Hanson Robotics, Nadine is not in fact a Hanson Robotics robot. Its physical body and head were manufactured by the Japanese animatronics firm Kokoro, while the artificial intelligence, behaviour, and social capabilities were developed by Professor Thalmann's teams, first at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and, more recently, at MIRALab at the University of Geneva, where work has focused on integrating large language models.

Nadine is positioned as a socially intelligent companion and assistant. It can answer questions autonomously in several languages, recognise people it has met before, simulate mood and emotion, and recall the content of past conversations, which lets it sustain flowing, personalised interaction over time.

RoboZaps maintains this record as part of its canonical robotics database. Specs are source-verified where linked; the record compares public facts across manufacturers rather than representing a single robot maker.