This "walking wonder" is developed with the aim of human-robot coexistence. It expresses emotions and communicates with people as it learns and matures through time, autonomously changing its behavioral patterns. It shows these emotions through sounds, motions, and eye lights. "Sad" Aibo will pay little attention to your orders, but it may sing you a little tune or even dance if it "feels" happy!

Aibo is fully autonomous robot, as it can make its own decisions based on its environment and communication with its owner. In addition to that, it can be switched to Performance mode, for performing a variety of tricks, or Game mode, where it is remotely controlled to do a variety of motions - ranging from basics such as moving forward and backward, to motions such as putting something in or taking something out of its mouth.

Mechanically, this robot has 18 joints producing 250 types of movement. It has sensors corresponding to people's senses, including a touch sensor on its head that lets it develop tactile relations when a person taps it or pets it; two stereo microphones; CCD color camera and a distance sensor that let it search for colors it likes and avoid obstacles; and acceleration sensors and angular speed sensors implementing the sense of balance. In addition to that, it includes a sophisticated emotion model with six emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, dislike), and instinct model with four instincts (love, search, movement, and recharge instincts). Like people and animals, Aibo's grows through several developmental stages (toddler phase, child phase, adolescent phase, and adult phase). Its education and previous experience is closely linked to building it's personality, character and intelligence. For instance, if Aibo is frequently slapped on the head while looking at an object that it had grown to like, it will learn not to approach this object as often. On the contrary, if Aibo is praised (by gently touching its head for more than two seconds) when looking at a particular object, it may start to "like" it. The kind of human-robot interaction Aibo experiences will largely shape its personality as well as stimulate its curiosity to learn.

Aibo's behavior and growth data are recorded and stored on an 8MB Memory Stick. You can use the separately sold software, Aibo Performer Kit, to create and exchange Aibo motion data with other users.

The Aibo package itself (ERS-110) sells for US $2,500 plus tax (As of June 1, it is sold exclusively at the Sony's Web site). It's also available in Japan at a cost of 250,000 yen. For that price you'll also get home base and battery charger (batteries included), power supply for the base station, sound commander (musical remote controller for Aibo), one Memory Stick, Aibo's toy ball and documentation. The Aibo Performer Kit (ERF-510) sells for US $450 and is available in Japan for 50,000 yen.

Update 06/02/99: Sony says its robotic dog sold out in Japan only 20 minutes after going on sale! Now it is manufactured on customer's order, and you should expect approximately 2 or 3 months from receipt of the deposit to the delivery. To register on a waiting list, visit this site.

There is another, even more exciting pet-robot project that must be mentioned here. Brain Builder Group at ATR, a research lab in Kyoto, Japan, headed by Dr. Hugo de Garis is building a kitten robot as a means to show off the capacities of the artificial brain. The original (and perhaps over-ambitious) aim of their "CAM-Brain Project", as stated at its beginning in 1993, was to build an artificial brain with a billion artificial neurons, by the year 2001, using evolved cellular automata (CA) based neural circuit modules. Six years later, this number is expected to be maximally 40 million of neurons and 32,000 modules. These CA based neural network modules grow and evolve at electronic speeds inside special FPGA based hardware called a CAM-Brain Machine (CBM), which can update CA cells at a rate of 150 Billion a second, and can evolve a neural net module in about 1 second. A commercial software simulation package "Working Model 3D" by Knowledge Revolution Inc. is currently being used to simulate some of the behaviors of the robot kitten. A real hardware robot would not be sufficiently reliable for this task, as it requires tens of thousands of iterations to evolve simple walking, turning, etc. Successfully evolved behavioral control modules will be downloaded into the RAM brain of a real hardware robot that will be built by Dr. Michael Korkin of Genobyte, Inc.

"Aibo"and "Memory Stick" are trademarks of Sony Corporation.

   Site(s) of interest:

• Aibo
  Aibo's home site: everything you wanted to know about this robot.
• Entertainment androids/robots
  Large and frequently updated list of entertainment androids and robots.
• Interactive and adaptive entertainment robot
  The goal of this project was that of developing a neural controller capable of using human reinforcement signals in order to allow interactive learning of a mobile robot.
• Robokoneko
  Building/growing/evolving an artificial brain by 2001 with a billion artificial neurons, that will be used to control the behaviors of a kitten robot "Robokoneko" (robot child cat).
• RoboMedia
  RoboMedia has specialized in developing, refining and using interactive robots to teach, market and entertain.