- In July of 1999, Sony gave tech lovers the perfect gift
to kick off life in the new millennium,
the first robot dog for the home.
AIBO stood for Artificial Intelligence Robot.
But when pronounced in Sony's native Japanese,
the word also means buddy, pal,
or more sinisterely, accomplice.
And even though it cost $2100 and was only sold
on the internet, again, back in 1999,
Sony sold 5000 AIBOs in its first week.
Flash forward 20 years and the newest AIBO
just clomped his way into my home.
Hi.
He's sophisticated, smart and so lifelike,
he'll wag his way right into your heart.
Which is exactly why those who buy him
should be careful. (mid tempo synth music)
What do you think?
My AIBO review sample came from Sony
with an unexpected treat.
The previous reviewer's profile hadn't been cleared,
so he already had a sex, male, a name, Trotter,
and a glimmer of personality.
See AIBO's designed to learn, over time,
over a period of months, even years
to complete the illusion of a puppy
that gradually grows into a dog.
Trotter is still young, with what seems to me
like only a few weeks of cumulative experiences.
So his behaviors are unpredictable.
It's clear he hears and understands the commands
I give to him, but sometimes he disobeys.
What are you growling for? No growling!
(yapping) Bad!
OK, sit down.
(yapping) Sit down!
(yapping)
If this sounds frustrating, (laughing) yeah it can be.
But that's by design.
Like a real puppy, Trotter is difficult
because he hasn't been trained yet.
It's a different kind of frustration
than when Jibo can't understand a verbal cue,
or Vector constantly drives himself off a table.
Keep those robots in mind folks
because I will be coming back to them.
AIBO is in some ways a more pure form of social robot
than I've used because he hasn't had
any practical skills grafted on, at least not yet.
This is a robot made purely to be your pal,
not to tell you the weather, or wake you up in the morning,
at least not when you want him to.
(yapping) He barks, he wags,
he trots, oh I just got that!
When his two hours of battery charge are exhausted,
he's designed to walk back to his charging pad on his own
which he accomplishes about half the time.
The wide angle camera in his nose
and the time of flight sensor in his mouth
give him vision and depth perception
so he can play with his bone and ball
and avoid falling off high places most of the time.
Nice!
When I said this robot is sophisticated, I mean it.
You see this camera at the root of his tail?
That will eventually help AIBO map the ceiling
of your home to help him navigate
using a technology called SLAM
popularized by robot vacuum cleaners.
AIBO's eyes are OLED displays, expressive and playful.
And they don't really flicker like this,
that's a trick of the camera.
AIBO has capacitive and pressure sensors in paws,
head, and back so Trotter can tell the difference
between a pat and a whack.
And four microphones too, so he can discern
between vocal praise and vocal scolding.
(yapping) Hi!
(laughing)
All this input from you he feeds to his servers
in Sony's cloud to apply those lessons
and grow his personality.
And therein lies a problem.
Folks I just published a video titled
"It's time to stop buying social robots."
The reason I took that stand is because
they're just too good at convincing us softie humans
to welcome them into our hearts
which means they're almost guaranteed to break our hearts
when the companies behind them go out of business.
Take Jibo Incorporated, when it went under,
its eponymous robot became a shell of its former self.
And I was affected enough by that to make a funereal,
almost reverential video about it.
With Anki Robotics now out of business,
its robot Vector, struggling to avoid the same fate.
I don't expect Sony will go out of business anytime soon
but you know, corporations are fickle.
At some point the company might start to wonder
how much money it could save by shuttering
its robot dog division.
What's that?
Oh!
This just in.
That exact thing already happened once.
Yep, back in 2006, Sony cited poor sales
for its decision to discontinue AIBO
breaking the hearts of a generation of owners.
A lot of the old message boards
are still up from those times.
And mining them is actually a fascinating bit
of web archeology, fancy bitmap wallpapers and all.
When Sony formally halted support for AIBOs,
the ones that were already purchased in 2014,
a cottage industry of AIBO repair shops sprung up
to keep repairing the aging pups.
Now look, you may find it difficult to understand
or even absurd, that people from real emotional bonds
with robots, but it does happen.
And when they stop working, the grief is real too.
Now that said, we have to give Sony the credit it deserves.
Continuing support for a terminated product
for seven years shows rare compassion for the users.
And in that same spirit, Sony's trying to turn the cloud
to its advantage, by, get this, letting you back up
your AIBO's entire personality to the servers.
It'd be like if you had a USB port in your sternum
and could back up your soul.
That way if something happens to your puppy,
well, you could buy a new one
and download your old AIBO's personality into it.
That connection to the cloud is via wifi or LTE
with three years of connectivity
baked into the cost of AIBO.
Expensive? Sure.
But the kind of person willing to drop almost three Gs
on a robot companion is the same person
willing to do that more than once.
If it means they don't have to lose their friend.
I asked Sony what happens if AIBO loses touch
with its servers, like if, say it was discontinued again?
And the company said AIBO relies on the servers
to remember tricks and to learn over time,
but not to function on the day-to-day.
So no sudden doggy death.
AIBO certainly has his problems.
Trotter is a clumsy walker.
His singing to himself can get on your nerves.
Pees on things on occasion.
And his companion app is truly terrible.
Like if the adoption process for a real dog
was as convoluted as AIBO's initial setup,
no one would own a pet.
But if, for whatever reason you can't or won't
get a biological buddy, and you have $2900 to spend
on an artificial one, AIBO is the only social robot
I've used that I can still recommend.
You're still at the mercy of a big company,
but Sony's track record is better
than anyone else's at this point.
And even if the worst happens, servers get turned off,
your dog won't die, it'll just stop learning.
And at some point,
don't we all?
Give me a paw, hi!
(laughing)
Event alert, folks, if you like drones,
you're in for a treat on Friday July 12th.
I'm headed down to Brooklyn, New York
to check out the BMW Formula E Drone Racing League Event
live and in person.
Don't miss it, follow me on Instagram @theMrMobile.
Folks if you want to learn some more about social robots,
check out my two videos on Jibo and one on Vector,
RIP times two @theMrMobile on YouTube.
And please subscribe if tech videos like this
get your servo spinning.
This video made possible by a three week
AIBO review device loan from Sony.
No copy approval was granted,
and no compensation was provided.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile, my friends.