Coming soon to the library: Humanoid robots

Westport isn’t the only public library with robots. In May, the Chicago Public Library, in partnership with Google Inc., GOOGL +0.52% made 500 “Finch” robots available to patrons at six of its branches. The dot-eyed, half-domed machines, the size of dinner plate on wheels, are also used to teach computer programming and coding.

Aldebaran said it has sold about 6,000 robots world-wide, mostly to museums and schools. At nearly $8,000 a machine, the NAO Evolution models, which were acquired by Westport with private funds, cost considerably more than the Finch machines, which run $99 each.

But the Aldebaran robots are also more complex—equipped with two cameras, four microphones, motion sensors and sonar to detect walls.