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Aibo may be a good boi, but Sony's robot dog is toying with our emotions
"I'm an IT guy, so I'm just a down-and-out geek. It's all about the AI for me," Chris Benham tells me, as we sit in his home in sleepy Burlington, Wisconsin, roughly 80 miles northwest of Chicago. He invited me to see his Aibo, named Bentley, and to learn exactly what it is that endears people to Sony's robot dog.
Aibo looks like a puppy, albeit a robo-approximation. It makes vaguely dog-like sounds, walks around, plays with toys, responds to commands, occasionally misbehaves and uses cameras and facial recognition technology to interact differently with each person it encounters.
If you take the "robot" part out of that equation, Aibo is a lot like a real dog. Love it or hate it, that's what makes Aibo so darn compelling. It's also why researchers are studying companion bots more and more, asking important questions about how the AI makes decisions, how it manipulates your emotions and what that could mean as these robots become more prevalent.
Benham goes on to explain that the advanced artificial intelligence powering Bentley is the reason he was among the first in the US to buy a $2,900 ERS-1000, the most recent iteration of the robo-pup, introduced in 2018.
It can't hurt that Aibo is kind of cute.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:47PM (7 children)
But never $2,000-$3,000 worth of cool. I've always wanted one but can't / won't shell out that sort of cash. Then again, I'd never, ever buy a purebred pet when so many are in need of rescue anyway.
I've always wondered what we might be able to open source using $300ish of servos and parts and a Raspberry Pi.
Not to mention wondering what will happen when Aibo [again] goes the way of the Betamax, MiniDisc, and Reader.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Funny) by archfeld on Tuesday July 02 2019, @08:53PM (1 child)
All dogs go to heaven...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Dogs_Go_to_Heaven [wikipedia.org]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @01:35AM
I saw that movie 20 years ago and I want to watch it again, but I'm not sure if I can handle the ending again. Poor Charlie....
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday July 02 2019, @09:13PM
I'm guessing RasPi 4 will compare well to whatever crap chip is powering toy robot dogs. Maybe it can do everything mentioned in the summary. Or you could get a dedicated chip like the one Google paired with RasPi 3 for its Vision Kit [raspberrypi.org].
But what would really be cool are next-gen neuromorphic chips in robots (like TrueNorth [wikipedia.org], but scaled up vertically).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday July 02 2019, @10:12PM
Same. When it was first released I really wanted to get one. Until I saw the price tag. I still wanted one, not just at that price.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:26AM
Well, one may dispute it as the leading cause [knowledgenuts.com], but adult entertainment industry did have a role in the death of Betamax.
Now, I don't know... that tentacle fetish is so Japanese at core, so... are you implying the same industry has some interests in Aibo?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Wednesday July 03 2019, @08:48AM (1 child)
Actually a real dog will cost more than $2000-3000...
Food, Vet Bills, grooming, cleaning your car out after driving him somewhere. It adds up to much more than that over the dogs lifetime, even if it is a free rescue dog. (Which most rescues are not free and require a donation... but still highly recommended to do it this way.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:38PM
True, yet the TCO of a dog isn't all up front the way an Aibo would be (at least for rescues). Hopefully a real dog might have a longer life than the Aibo. You're right that one has to consider TCO. Still, our pets here probably reach the breakeven point at around 3 to 4 years if one discounts whatever electricity and base computer costs for the Aibo.
This sig for rent.