We got to play with one of iDAT’s Aibo dogs in the games module the other day. Seem pretty cool if not rather expensive. Also Sony shut down their robotics division in 2006 so they don’t sell them any more…or offer any support! Nice one Sony!

Aibo wikipedia depinition below:
“AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt, homonymous with “partner” in Japanese) is one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction in 1999. Able to walk, “see” its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands, they are considered to be autonomous robots, since they are able to learn and mature based on external stimuli from their owner or environment, or from other AIBOs.”

The aibo is basically an artificially intelligent robotic dog with loads of cool things bunged in…like wifi connections, cameras, voice and face recognition, sensors and the whole thing is programmable to pretty much whatever you want it too. There are loads of downloadable personalities for it…some quite questionable…but on the whole its quite a cool bit of kit!

I took some videos of it doing random stuff…we couldn’t work out what personality it had loaded at the time.