I 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

I 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.