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Finally, I can teach a dog to help keep the mother-in-law outside the house, and for it to unplug the phone when the call is coming from her house!

Unless you want to modify the embedded OS, there is no need to hack AIBO anymore. Sony provides an excellent and free software development package that you can use to program AIBO to do anything, including controlling it from another computer (Windows and Unix) via WLAN (802.11b). Here's the URL:

http://openr.aibo.com/openr/eng/index.php4/

Keep in mind that the US and Europe mini-sites for AIBO haven't been fully updated yet with the newly announced ERS-7M3 version. The US site mentions the ERS-7M3, but doesn't explain the new features (talking, diary-writing, dictating news, and so on). The Europe site describes the RSS newsfeed dication feature, but doesn't mention some of the other features.

The Japanese site has the most details of the new Mind 3 capabilities:
http://www.jp.aibo.com/

One factoid not mentioned in the linked article is that the new AIBO can blog.

Yes, blog. In addition to "talking" and keeping a "diary" of its daily routine, it can automatically and wirelessly upload its entries to an public blog website for all to read. (For all Japanese-literate, at least.) As with any blog, the owner and similarly squishy entities can submit comments to AIBO's entries.

http://www.jp.aibo.com/products/ers7m3/aep04.html

Sony actually thought it was necessary to post the following warning:
"* [People] can write comments, but AIBO cannot respond to the comments."

Plus, you can train AIBO with your daily routine by importing your Microsoft Outlook schedule into him/her/soulless thingy. For example, AIBO can dictate today's news headlines as you eat breakfast.

I'll let the concept of an unholy alliance between robotic dogs, blogs, and Microsoft Outlook sink in before the blood-curdling begins.

Can keep good company. It's really well designed. Usually amazes people and chicks.
But, most importantly, there is an SDK free for anyone to download.
It's very simple to hack some quick programs running on Windows, remotely controlling the dog (completely, or sharing it with the personality software).
It's possibly the best solution out there for anyone that wants to experiment with the software side of robotics.

Or, you could download the OPEN-R SDK for the AIBO and program it to do anything you want.

http://openr.aibo.com/openr/eng/index.php4

UPenn even ported a perl interpreter for the AIBO.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/robocup/index.php

AIBO is actually a rather interesting platform for experimenting with image processing and signal processing algorithms, as well as team coordination algorithms.

It's easy to write code for an AIBO... there's a number of open source software frameworks for this great hardware platform -- although of course my favorite would be my own: Tekkotsu

And it's all supported by Sony -- no hacking required!

There's a variety of levels you can code at as well -- there's several high-level scripting languages like URBI, R-Code, and even a couple upcoming Python interfaces, as well as a number of low-level C/C++ interfaces (e.g. Tekkotsu) which can run onboard and directly process every bit and byte, or remote control from your PC for maximum horsepower.

Here are some options:

It's technically a dog, but some really look more like cats, Kitty, Meow Chi and more at Yenra.com.

I call shenanigans!

For some reason I can't imagine today's robotic dogs eating more than one page a day.

> .. umm, do they come with a routine to retrieve beer from the fridge?

Probably not, considering that this robot is basically a torso with arms and a head. Maybe if you strap it to a dog, or better yet, an AIBO...

Yeah, isn't the aibo great?

We are not that far away from seeing robotics in consumer environment on a regular basis. This trailer is identical in format to the Honda ads, doesn't really say anything and just kind of gives you the "cool stuff, coming soon" feel.

Honestly, some of you really put the 'eek' in 'geek'.

System SDK: OPEN-R

or a framework which builds on top of the SDK: Tekkotsu

The goal of the Tekkotsu project is to eventually be able to train a robot like a dog.
It's open-source, so you can try your hand at it if you think it should be easy ;)

• Your car was built mostly by robot.
  
• Your computer's motherboard was built mostly by robots.
  
• Computers control your flights when the plane is on autopilot.
  
• Computers control the actual braking on your ABS brakes.
  
• Computers control the traffic lights you stop/go at.
  
• A robot (built by Honda) is working as a receptionist at IBM in Japan.
  
• People can buy robotic dogs.
  

The damn robot dog

OK, OK, well, you do lose the immersive VR environment on the client side.... :-)

Sony's AIBO provides a much more sophisticated legged design, and has a freely available OPEN SDK to allow you to create whatever kind of program that you want. You can even get refurbished models for $699!

Which would you rather have in your living room?

It seems Sony is hosting an OPEN-R/AIBO programming seminar, and it's free to the public!

Lookee here.

For those of you who would like to do research with real world data, but don't want to spend time actually building the robot before you can use it - the Aibo is a great platform.

There's a free software development kit from Sony as well as an application framework to get you jump-started.

Universities are doing just that in the various RoboCup events.

They back tracked

Not anymore

It once cost a substantial amount of money to buy an AIBO devkit from Sony; I now think they're wising up by opening up the SDK and allowing GPLd libraries like Tekkotsu to exist.

Um, the Fujitsu sports a Pentium III 700MHz and as far as I can see a single camera.

The SDR-4X II sports 3 64bit RISC processors each with 64Mb RAM (The previous SDR-4X had only two). Two cameras for stereoscopic vision. And from the presentation I've seen, the vision software is quite impressive.

> While it's not as customizable

Not as customisable? Are you refering to the add-on WLAN? The SDR-4X II has a Memory Stick slot (it's a Sony :) ). You can add a tremendiously expensive Bluetooth or WLAN Memory Stick. Not that the cost of those would matter, when your buying the robots.
Or are you suggesting to go with a screwdriver at the >$40k robots?

The SDR-4X II is programmable with the Open-R SDK.

From what I know, I'd rather have the SDR-4X II. Not that I'm able to afford one, or that I would reject an offered HOAP-2 as gift.

How about the Metrobots that are Sony AIBO robots used as embodied multi-agent systems that play robotic soccer too.

They are planning to enter the RoboCup American Open at CMU in Spring of 2003 and hoping to participate in RoboCup 2003 in Padua Italy.

Suhit

I think those of us in the community can expect nothing but great things from this leap of faith from the Japanese. Imagine if you will - in Soviet Russia, computer mice may very well play with you!!!

Actually...I was thinking more along the lines of RAS into the home network. Issue your "startup" command while you drive home from Dinner.

Lights come on, the heat is turned up a few notches, bath water starts running at a comfortable 106 degrees, the stereo comes on to your favorite cd...etc.

Sony has been known not to enjoy third party software being run on their hardware.
I understand that in recent times they have been acting like more of a team player, but thats the thing here. is it just an act?

Sony has been known not to enjoy third party software being run on their hardware.
I understand that in recent times they have been acting like more of a team player, but thats the thing here. is it just an act?

Sony has been known not to enjoy third party software being run on their hardware.
I understand that in recent times they have been acting like more of a team player, but thats the thing here. is it just an act?

Uhhhh, not quite. AIBO has a completely open API for doing programming on their platform. It's called OPEN-R. The idea that AIBO is not programmable is simply not true.

Here's their website.

:p

Good points. I think Sony's plan is to continue to improve the hardware and software while slowly lowering the price over time. Eventually the Aibo will be much more advanced as well as more reasonably priced.

The Aibo certainly isn't marketed for kids, based on the price and the fact that it's not something that little Timmy can flail about the room.

There are alternatives to Sony's software. Check out aibopet's site for a lot of Aibo info as well as free software.

The AI is actually pretty impressive. I guess it's not technically true AI, but at the very least, it's clever enough to create the illusion of being a thinking animal. The Aibo Life software evolves through different stages, beginning as a newborn puppy. Based on how you interact with it, it's personality changes. There are enough factors involved in this growth process to make an Aibo seem different from other Aibos. Ours seems to like dark spaces, which is strange because because they typically migrate towards well lit areas. Our 210 tends to wander under the coffee table for a nap or into a dark bathroom.

The Aibo Life 2 software is more impressive than the original Life 1 stick (another $100, ugh). Each release of the software adds to the feature list and makes the illusion more believable. The recently announced Recognition software adds face recognition, voice recognition (it 'knows' it's owners voice vs generic voice recognition) and the ability to find it's charger and refresh it's batteries. Of course, that's another $100.

Also, check out Sony's Open-R site .

It doesn't seem like there's anything special here. Look at the picture! It looks just like an ergonomic plastic thingy with wheels and a bicycle style handlebar. Someone with some machine shop expertise could probably make a poor man's version of this.

First off, this is not supposed to be quality journalism like C|NET. This is a community-run forum. Most of these stories are posted by other users of the site, not even by the site's administrators. Very few of these people are professional journalists, and even fewer of them (if any) are getting paid a thing for posting information here.

Secondly, a search just about anywhere on the word "aibo" should turn up far more than enough information to answer this question. Heck, you can even just type in www.aibo.com and get information. The tagline here is "News for nerds." There's an level of technical expertise expected from the readers here. Many of the stories here are about DIY hacks and coding....if you can't even look up a major product like the Aibo, I really don't think you should be here.

yrs,
Ephemeriis

Good to see the fact that they are opening up their architecture reported in a mainstream story, but this is really a repeat of an earlier posting that had some really good links to the developer site and some of the hacker sites:

Teach An Old Aibo New Tricks

• Site Gutted by Sony based on DMCA
  My Take:
  This site is great. I think this is exactly what we need. The only thing that really got removed per the story referenced below is "virgin" copies of Aibo-Life, because everything you could possibly want, and more, is available, including "RCodePlus", which appears to be a utility for writing and transferring RCode ("Plus" some aibohack.com extensions) to your Aibo.
  
  Summary:
  http://www.aibohack.com had much of its content removed because it built on Sony's AiboWare, but added new features.
  Among its programs:
  AiboScope: Wirelessly transmits images from robot's camera to a computer
  Disco Aibo: Execute a programmable dance when Aibo hears a certain song.
  Brainbo: Uses voice-recognition. When Aibo hears a phrase, Aibo selects an appropriate response and "says" it.
  
  Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000086726nov01. story?coll=la-headlines (old)
  http://www.latimes.com/search/lat_all.jsp?Query=Ai bo (new, needs registration)
• AIBO Uses Copy-Protection on its Memory Sticks
  My Take:
  While it would probably be trivial to overcome Sony's copy-protection algorithms, it's not worth the bother. $35 for a PMS (Programmable Memory Stick) is money well spent, and if all the code consists of is bootstrapping into the WLAN, we'd only need one for each 'bot.
  
  Summary:
  Sony makes red/pink memory sticks specifically for the Aibo. They contain copy-protection code that means that you can't copy their programs from one stick to another (unless, of course, the second one already had that program installed).
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/123/format.htm
• Japan-Only AiboWare Releases
  My Take:
  Nothing new here.
  
  Summary:
  Sony released several pieces of AiboWare that are only available in Japan. Based on what a friend of mine could manage to decode, there's nothing here to pique our interest.
  
  Source: http://www.yk.rim.or.jp/~hkora11/aibo_2nd-g/kAiboW are.htm (in Japanese)
• More-or-less Complete 210 Hardware Reference
  My Take:
  Note that the 200Mhz (!) CPU uses the MIPS IV instruction set, for which there are no shortage of compilers. We may be in luck yet! (Of course, we might have to replace the current flash ROM with a custom one to develop that luck, but based on other readings, there seems to be very little code in the flash ROM and a heck of a lot of JPEGs of the development team.) You want to read this page.
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/210/hardware.htm
• Brain Surgery: a Tool for Editing AiboLife
  My Take:
  An excellent tool, but not very applicable to our particular challenge. Nonetheless, a useful resource of which to be aware.
  
  Summary:
  Basically, Brain Surgery allows users to view and edit the data Aibo "feels". What does this mean? You can abuse your Aibo, and fix it yourself--no Sony required.
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/2or3/browser.htm

Interesting, from the FAQ at aibo.com Windows 2K or XP is require for the SDK, but what's weird is they use gcc.

Look at the SDK download files list:

(OPEN-R SDK tools and documents)
OPEN_R_SDK-1.1.3-r1.tar.gz OPEN-R SDK
OPEN_R_SDK-sample-1.1.3-r1.tar.gz Sample programs
OPEN_R_SDK-doc-1.1.3-r1.tar.gz Documents
upgrade-OPEN_R-1.1.3-r1.tar.gz FlashUpdater for ERS-210

(Binaries for cross development tools for Windows 2000/XP)
GNU Tools can be downloaded from this WEB site, but they are not
included in the OPEN-R SDK.
cygwin-packages-1.3.6-bin.exe Cygwin binaries
mipsel-devtools-3.0.4-bin.tar.gz MIPS cross-development tools for Cygwin

(Source files for cross development tools)
cygwin-packages-1.3.6-src.tar.gz Cygwin source files
gcc-3.0.4.tar.gz gcc source files
binutils-2.11.2.tar.gz binutils source files
newlib-1.9.0.tar.gz newlib source files

(Other Tools)
build-devtools-3.0.4.sh Shell script for building cross
development tools

Looks real Linux/Gnu-ish to me.

64-bit AIBO's!!!

Err, umm, I think the AIBOs have R4000's or R4400's or something such as that in them; they're 64-bit processors. This spec sheet for the AIBO ERS-220 says it has a "64bit RISC processor".

• Price. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that LCDs cost about 5-7 times a comparable CRT. The simple fact of the matter is that manufacturers understand how to make CRTs well, and the same cannot be said of LCDs.
• Picture quality. All of my LCDs had a terrible viewing angle - no better than 15 degrees to either side. Furthermore, ghosting was a big problem with games (even with active matrix, or DSTN, displays), and all of my units had several always-dark or always-light pixels. This should not come as a surprise, as most manufacturers will tolerate shipping units that have as many as 25 or 30 broken pixels.
• Weight. OLED products promise to significantly reduce the weight of the display, because they will not require so much glass to produce.
• Durability. LCD displays are scads more sensitive to EMF, shock, and time than CRT displays are. Dropping my CRT resulted in a few scratches; dropping an LCD results in a sloppy mess and a couple hundred dollars down the tubes.
• Compatibility. I had problems getting two out of the three LCD monitors to run with Linux. Since they rarely use a standard VGA connector, they require a proprietary video card which sometimes will not have open source driver support. Given that I run an all-open source shop this was unacceptable.

will

That's pretty cool . There are lots of sort of soccer championships for robots, one of them with aibo, the famous robot dog. It's especialy interresting in the field of the computer vision interaction.

The latest AIBO is directly aimed at nerds. It no longer looks like a dog, but more like an evil little droid.

$1500 for a basic unit, and then you need to buy all the extra crap for wireless networking so it can read you your e-mail and wander your home under your control from a PC, but if you want an expensive toy, this one is feature rich

The latest AIBO is directly aimed at nerds. It no longer looks like a dog, but more like an evil little droid.

$1500 for a basic unit, and then you need to buy all the extra crap for wireless networking so it can read you your e-mail and wander your home under your control from a PC, but if you want an expensive toy, this one is feature rich

I want an AIBO! I figure its going to cost the same amount of money to get a cool "real" dog (ie. Italian Mastiff,etc), why not get one that my lazy ass doesnt have to clean up after.

Damn... Now this.
I was saving my money for a new Aibo.
I wonder is this robot is also compatible with my Honda Civic so I could read the paper on my way to work.

While following links about the aibo, I found about those cute ERS-310 aibos...

Hey, they can even sing songs! What else could you hope for?

I have an AIBO 210, and not only does it have a built in digital camera but it also supports 802.11b wireless networking via an optional PCMCIA card.

Some folks have already written software that allows the AIBO send images in real time of what is "sees" to a PC or Mac.

The new AIBOs (ERS 310 series) have guardog software available (no custom programming required) that lets them watch a certain place or item, taking photos of who ever or what ever moves in its field of vision.

No word on GPS yet, but these things only have about a two hour battery run time, and they don't move that fast; I don't think they can wander that far afield for GPS to be useful.

Some useful links :

AIBO Hackers - lots of free software

Sony Europe AIBO web site

"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash

And have they thought about how they're going to seal the controls to keep the vaseline from leaking into everything?

Seriously, I can just see the humans of the future as big blobs just laying in their Poetic Tech Chair twitching and jerking their way through life with attendant Aibos and Palm-creatures zipping around them. Actual contact won't be necessary as we can stop and smell the roses right on the information highway.