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Sony Aibo
- sowbug 9y ago190,000 yen to buy robot dog, plus 90,000 yen for required 3-year "Aibo basic plan" (lump-sum option) = about $2,500.
- lucaspiller 9y agoFor comparison the first version released in 1999 was 250,000 yen (around $2,500 at the time).
- Aissen 9y agoJust calculated the price adjusted for inflation: http://fxtop.com/en/inflation-calculator.php?A=250000&C1=JPY&INDICE=JPCPI2010&DD1=11&MM1=05&YYYY1=1999&DD2=31&MM2=12&YYYY2=2017&btnOK=Compute+actual+value http://fxtop.com/en/inflation-calculator.php?A=250000&C1=JPY... It's 252,021 yen.
- helloworld 9y agoThe Google Translate version is funny: Born to be gazed at, it is an unbelievable pupil. Unexperienced love perseverance that I can not help touching unexpectedly. But I also got this useful info: Scheduled to be released on January 11, 2018.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 9y ago"見つめられるために生まれた、つぶらな瞳。 プリっとしたフォルム、生き生きとした動き。 思わず触れずにはいられない未体験の愛おしさ" translates (approximately) to: "Cute (eye) pupils, born to be gazed at. Moving around in a vivid manner, in a pure form. You can't grasp or can't imagine such an adorable experience."
- GolDDranks 9y agoプリっと doesn't mean pure but something like... Round, soft-looking, but firm. The final sentence means: "Before you even notice, you'll find yourself playing with the pup filled with adorableness you've never experienced before." Edit: came up with a more accurate one: "Unprecedented adorableness, that makes you want to touch it without a second thought."
- ekianjo 9y agoWell done, I did misunderstand the last sentence.
- thetinguy 9y agoHere's an English version http://aibo.sony.jp/en/ http://aibo.sony.jp/en/
- stuntkite 9y ago"I love pink. I also love to play with pink balls and toys. High places and narrow places are disgusting because they are scary." Surprisingly not an excerpt from my OkCupid profile, but it might be my opener now.
- tcmb 9y ago> Sensors: meat ball x 4
- moonka 9y agoI got to play with the older one a few years ago. A co worker found it in his garage and gave it to me. It was fun to check out, and it freaked out my real dog, but ended up dying pretty fast. There is (or at least was) a large community of folks who keep them around, and so we were able to sell it to be used as parts.
- mgsouth 9y agoThat is so disturbing :) Hmm. Maybe there's an emerging market for robot funerary services.
- ekianjo 9y ago> Maybe there's an emerging market for robot funerary services. Truth is stranger than fiction. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706090040.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706090040.html
- codewiz 9y agoWill Sony go after users distributing open source hacks for this new Aibo? Or maybe this time will they use DRM to prevent any software modification?
- ebrewste 9y agoI remember Aibo as the product that Sony made that could reverse all the positive feelings I had for their products because of this. It turns out that this was the true Sony. http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/02/05/03/1613203.shtml http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/02/05/03/1613203.shtml
- LeoPanthera 9y agoI was going to say that I was surprised it wasn't the Sony rootkit DRM scandal, but that was two years later!
- ekianjo 9y agoI wonder if there's any new market needs for this to come back from the dead. I thought they killed it because sales were so poor before, has anything changed since then?
- mrob 9y agoThis one is cloud based. It can collect all kinds of valuable private data for Sony.
- brians 9y agoSphero is selling toy robots like hot cakes.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoThe original AIBOs were also $2K-$3K each. The tech's price has dropped quite a bit since the early 2000s, and I imagine there's more demand at lower price points. Edit: Apparently the new one will be selling for about the same price? Yeah, in that case they'll probably have the same problems as before.
- ekianjo 9y agoWhen i see this pet robot, I fail to see what problem it solves. That's probably the biggest issue: no focus.
- criddell 9y agoWhy does it have to solve a problem? It's not a tool.
- sparkzilla 9y agoIt doesn't shit all over your floor.
- kalleboo 9y agoWell if you want a pet/companion, but your apartment doesn't allow pets and you work a punishing Tokyo salaryman schedule so you couldn't take care of one even if it did.
- intopieces 9y agoGod bless weird Sony. I don't trust them for any mainstream product (maybe PS4, but certainly not phones or laptops) but they consistently fascinate me with niche-as-hell products that I am tempted to buy just out of curiosity.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoI don't think this is niche at all. It's as niche as the first 32MB MP3 player was niche.
- ekianjo 9y agoAt 2500 dollars you can bet it's going to be niche.
- chenster 9y agoThought Rio is the first one. https://www.amazon.com/Rio-One-Digital-Audio-Player/dp/B00005NIMH https://www.amazon.com/Rio-One-Digital-Audio-Player/dp/B0000...
- LeoPanthera 9y agoThe first one was the MPMan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPMan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPMan
- simonlc 9y agoThey're quite big now in the imaging market (cameras and sensors).
- dingo_bat 9y agoThe mirrorless cameras are all the rage right now.
- rwmj 9y agoI don't think the original Aibo was niche at all. I knew two people with them (back in 2000-ish if I'm remembering correctly).
- benliong78 9y agoThis is less adorable than I remember Aibo to be, and definitely less adorable than Cozmo IMHO.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoJapanese companies know how to build products for lonely people. And the rest of the world is catching up with this "loneliness", with advent of superficial social media oversharing. Everyone is increasingly becoming lonely inside. So I think this is a huge opportunity and not a niche product anymore as of 2017, as long as they get it right.
- ekianjo 9y ago> Japanese companies know how to build products for lonely people. Any evidence for this very broad claim?
- LeoPanthera 9y agohttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/toyota-hopes-adorable-robot-will-make-japan-less-lonely-180960689/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/toyota-hopes-adora... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/the-anime-girlfriend-experience-gateboxs-ai-powered-holographic-home-robot/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/the-a... http://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/2017/04/11/love-intimacy-and-companionship-tale-robots-japan http://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/2017/04/11/love-... https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/29/robot-caregivers-are-saving-the-elderly-from-lives-of-loneliness/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/29/robot-caregivers-are-sav...
- ekianjo 9y agoYou are aware that most Japanese find this kind of stuff creepy right? By far when given the choice Japanese will go for the human operator/human equivalent if available. We should not mistake Otaku trends for the general Japanese population.
- vortico 9y agoThe claim he was proving was "Japanese companies know how to build products for lonely people", and he proved it well. You are now arguing against the claim "all Japanese people enjoy this stuff", which is not what he was claiming at all.
- CGamesPlay 9y ago> Share memories. aibo keeps records of everything it experiences in day-to-day life, uploads the data to the cloud, and creates a database of memories that you can browse with the My aibo app. You can even ask aibo to take a picture—and you’ll be able to preserve that moment for posterity. http://aibo.sony.jp/en/feature/feature3.html http://aibo.sony.jp/en/feature/feature3.html
- ekianjo 9y ago> preserve that moment for posterity. Well for as long as they don't shut down the service, which is going to be hell shorter than "posterity".
- eyeareque 9y agoThis looks really cool. A 30 day warranty for an $1800 USD toy robot seems quite short. Is this normal for electronics in Japan? In the US I would expect at least a 1 year warranty.
- bboreham 9y agoLike Alexa, but cuddly.
- codezero 9y agoIn the last dot bomb, I was very tempted to buy an Aibo. I’m still tempted and I don’t feel like it’s the same kind of dot bomb.
- mastazi 9y agoEnglish version of the page: http://aibo.sony.jp/en/ http://aibo.sony.jp/en/
- suyash 9y agoHow about owning a real dog? real dog over robot dog anyday for me.
- Scaevolus 9y agoEnglish link (what you actually want to read): http://aibo.sony.jp/en/ http://aibo.sony.jp/en/
- kalys 9y agoJust read Asimov's "A Boy's Best Friend"
- LiweiZ 9y agohttps://youtu.be/sJciRIZQTg4 https://youtu.be/sJciRIZQTg4 TVC on YouTube, in case you are interested. I found it on the bottom of the webpage (just a little logo).
- noncoml 9y agoNot too far from “Robot and Frank” are we?
- vortico 9y agoI know I'm somewhat wrong, but I see no market for this whatsoever, besides as a learning toy for student AI laboratories, where the original AIBO is still popular. Can someone give me an example of a type of person of any wealth level or personality that would willingly go out of their way to purchase this? It doesn't clean the floor, so there's no practical function. It's not an MP3 player that follows you around or a Siri-like assistant, so it can't optimize your existing means of entertainment. The website advertises "love", but I see 0% actual connection with it, so anyone that claims this reason is doing it either ironically or perhaps due to certain object attraction mental conditions. If anyone wants to cure lonliness, this would seem to have zero effect. As a toy for children or hobbyist adults, it seems like a fun thing to play with and show your friends for a few days, but no better than a yoyo which is few orders of magnitude cheaper. For "tinkerers", it would be fun to program applications into it that use the sensors and motors, but if that was their primary market, it would advertised as an open development platform and they would leave out the pre-programmed AI. So what am I missing here? If I was an investor, I would value this at no more than $0 because sales can't possibly surpass R&D. What reasons are there to believe otherwise? EDIT: So it seems in this discussion I've learned that many believe that the love for dogs can actually be replaced by love for inanimate objects, which is a bizarre concept to me, but if the number of people who are able to do that is truly as significant as people are claiming, then I suppose I could see why this product could become successful.
- puranjay 9y agoPeople keep pet rocks Human beings can get attached to anything, regardless of its utility. This thing mimics the actions of a puppy, and it stays a puppy forever. Of course people would get attached to it, and in selling that attachment, there is value. You're approaching this too much from an engineer's POV
- vortico 9y ago>You're approaching this too much from an engineer's POV I don't agree with this. If anything, I am approaching it from a spiritual POV when I say that a normal person cannot love an object like you can love a dog.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAgain? I know several people that bought the first version of this robot dog, it had some very clever electronics for its time but it failed to find a market and became an expensive orphan. And now Sony goes back to the concept again. I wonder what is different.
- Johnny555 9y agoYikes, that's expensive, around $2000 for the base device, $900 for a required 3 year basic plan to make it operate (or $29/month for 36 months), plus $540 for the optional 3 year support plan. (ok, I cheated on the conversions at $1=100yen, it's around 13% cheaper that that based on the current usd/yen exchange rate) Makes a $1000 iPhone seem cheap.
- vsenko 9y agoAn idea of an autonomous cyber pet detached of any clouds and vendor infrastructure appeals to me a lot. But what Sony offers is a kind of a tentacle of a huge corporation.
- a_bonobo 9y agoIt's amazing how attached some Japanese people were to the old aibos. A report on a guy who specialised on repairing old aibos: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxk3g/there-is-one-man-and-only-one-man-who-can-still-repair-your-robot-dog https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxk3g/there-is-o... Shinto priests hold Aibo funeral services from time to time, here's a recent article: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706090040.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706090040.html Flats are small, not pet-friendly and people are old and lonely, there's a good market for the new one.
- puranjay 9y agoMy brother was sad for two days when his Roomba broke down. People are strange.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoThe prospect of going back to manual vacuuming after owning a Roomba would make me sad too. ;)
- rkuykendall-com 9y agoSame. After the first week, I decided I'd buy another the day this one broke. Sooooo much time saved.
- rodgerd 9y agoIntentionally designed or not, the way the roomba crashes around the house, with it's "extra dirt" light occasionally going off and it circling on an area, does rather resemble an enthusiastic puppy suffling around an exciting new space.
- pryelluw 9y agoI once built a line of sumo fighting robots and when it came time to sell them I couldn't do it. They were my babies. So I kept them. :)
- protomyth 9y ago
- 11235813213455 9y agoAnything would be good to replace real pets, there are way too many of them, it's consuming a lot of energy, resources, pollution, and damaging ecosystem
- mappu 9y agoIn New Zealand we had a controversial proposal to seriously reduce the cat population, over concerns about them destroying local protected wildlife. Pets provide important companionship. But some environmental costs of pet ownership aren't borne by the owners in a "privatize the profit, socialize the loss" situation. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860618 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
- 11235813213455 9y agoIt's not just the fact they kill a bunch of species for free. With 1 billion pets, their food (and all the process chain), treatments, transports costs like 5% more humans. It doesn't make sense with this planet state. The psychological support, I can understand, but it's quite ridiculous considering the ecological disaster coming
- johnchristopher 9y agoI noticed that webpage is really clean design-wise. Almost all webpages from Japan I had seen so far were really over saturated with colours and huge lettering in different fonts.
- dingo_bat 9y agoThis is Sony, so kind of expected to have good design.
- dingo_bat 9y agoI'd buy this over a real pet. If I had the $$$. One thing I can think would be annoying if it kept making robotic servo noises every time it moved.
- intoverflow2 9y agoReal dogs make plenty of noises and smells too to be fair.
- dingo_bat 9y agoThe whole point of robots is to do it better than nature. I think eliminating servo noises should be a priority. Maybe not the highest one.
- jonah 9y agoSome raw video from The Japan Times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRl_03_jNwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRl_03_jNwE
- hme 9y agoI own both an old ERS-7 and a Cozmo. It's striking how much Aibo is a likeable thing, full of surprise compared to Cozmo. I really noticed it when I got Cozmo. It's a shame given the amount of computational power Cozmo gets from the smartphone, and its way better camera. But I guess the constraints forced Aibo engineers into a more subtle and intelligent design. I'm disappointed, I really hoped for something unbelievable like Aibo was ten years ago.
- BJanecke 9y agoSomeone's been reading Fred Brooks ;)
- edshiro 9y agoI am thinking of getting Cozmo. What's your review on it? I'd also be interested in knowing how much we can tweak Cozmo (e.g. can we implement new features using computer vision, does it have its own programming language, etc,)
- hme 9y agoThe toy itself is not very fun. Even pretty annoying sometimes (like the stupid daily calibration task). It has no brain, you have to dedicate a smartphone to this. It's a very wrong move I think, though I understand the cost benefits. But the worst part is that almost every interaction with the robot goes first through the smartphone UI (like triggering a request for a game). It totally kills the experience, and makes it painful for parents of small kids, too young to have a phone. I have read somewhere that they hired some expert game designers and hollywood concept artists from Wall-E to design the actual experience. My harsh feeling is that it's the worst idea ever, it feels very much like a bad hollywood blockbuster, no subtlety but only misplaced costly special effects and tricks. I had little expectations though, I bought it to tweak it (someday). It uses a python SDK, you have to connect a dedicated smartphone to your computer, and the python SDK connects to the Cozmo app on the phone to send commands. Apparently the SDK is good, and the team seems serious about supporting this.
- ulfw 9y agoHow can one get one of these outside of Japan?
- joefreeman 9y agoSherry Turkle's book, 'Alone Together', is split into two parts - the first is an investigation into how people (mostly children and the elderly) interact/bond/etc with robots of varying sophistication - starts with Tamagotchi, Furby and My Real Baby, PARO, and goes onto research-level robots. The second part applies similar thinking to social media, which is why I picked up the book. But I found the robot stuff interesting. I think my main takeaway was realising that the robots don't have to actually be technologically advanced for people to form bonds with them. Interesting read anyway.
- antonyme 9y agoI developed on the Aibo years ago for Robocup robot soccer, writing software for object recognition, navigation, locomotion, etc. Much fun! It's surprising to see its return after a long hiatus, as Aibo has had several ups and downs in the market. And despite such a long period when it could have been enhanced, it looks like it is not significantly changed from the last generation.
- singularity2001 9y ago198000 JPY to USD: 1740,95 US Dollars, cheaper than the nao bot. [[ bwt: can JPY be pronounced juppy?;]]
- dhoulb 9y agoUncanny valley triggered.
- modernerd 9y agoI owned an early Aibo called RT – the first Aibo to have an artificial hip replacement from X-Dog, an engineer in the UK who specialised in repairing them. http://www.aibohospital.com/ http://www.aibohospital.com/ He pioneered the “operation”, fabricated the metal replacement parts by hand-milling them, and successfully replaced the hip joint in an era where home 3D printing was a pipe dream and Sony couldn't hope to offer the same repair service. The “hip jitter” became a common fault, and X-Dog ended up with a waiting list of Aibos to fit new artificial hips to. It was pretty incredible at the time, and it felt like being part of the future – like the robot pet repair clinics in Philip K. Dick's _Do Androids Dream…_. The most impressive thing about Aibos at the time – apart from ball-tracking and kicking – was their self-righting mechanism. It became a party trick for people to knock them down and see them get up again, a precursor of sorts to viral bullying of the modern Boston Dynamics prototypes. I sold RT, but still remember feeling sad to watch Sony wind Aibo output down. It's nice to see them coming back.
- SeanLuke 9y agoSony brought 12 or so early Aibo prototypes to the Agent 97 conference. IIRC the device was developed at Sony's D21 laboratory (later the "digital creatures laboratory") and was called the Mutant, for "Musical Tangible Agent". You'd play notes from a little keyboard and it would respond. I was told they hadn't determined what kind of animal it should be yet, and were leaning towards monkey. They had some faux fur for it too. But it wagged its tail! So everyone at the conference told them it should clearly be a dog. At the end of the conference all 12 of the prototypes had broken neck servos. Because so many people had patted them on the head.