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... I remember when this came out and I wanted it SO bad- as bad as any 8 or 9 year old kid who's learning electronics can want. I think it was about 300$ or so for the kit- big money back then.

Most of the comments i've seen so far are jokes poking fun at the way it looks, features, etc. Must be those 'youngins' i've heard so much about. Why, the HERO is the great grand-daddy to that fancy schmancy SONY robot that can walk on two legs. The joke being, "In my day Robots ROLLED around- there wasn't enough hard radiation to mutate them into ones with legs".

Etc.

I've watched ebay for a few heathkit robots to come across but to no avail (at my pricepoint, that is ;P)

Anyways, pretty sweet. To those of you that enjoy mocking it, go get your stupid AIBO and bitch about it when Sony changes the firmware... because you didn't actually build it yourself.

As other posters have pointed out, Sony is in legal squabbles with Aibo hacking sites. A POV that paints a rather disturbing (if one can use such a word in the context of a robot pet dog) picture of Sony's tactics can be found here. After reading the above, I'd like to urge people to sign a petition to send a message to Sony so people could customize their Aibos. (And signing the petition also helps Red Cross, which actually is something that matters.)

Universities already customize their Aibo software to participate in Robot Cup, and I don't see why individual users shouldn't be allowed to do the same. Sony will probably use the same prohibitive pricing as it currently uses with all Aibo software, but it would be a start.

Please Troll this down. I am sorry, I had to vote in NYC today and needed to take off the edge...

Yesterday, California Gov. Davis said bridges on the entire West Coast were going to blow up. The week before that, Anthrax was everywhere making already testy US Postal Employees, with the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, a little more edgy in mass wearing disguises. I am not even going to start with jumbo jets plowing into buildings 3/4 miles south of my apartment a month ago.

Now, thanks to Slashdot, I am freaking out about things I can't see without an electron microscope (yea like I got those laying around like cue-cats) crawling around my body screwing up my DNA! With the way the technology industry is dominated and my luck, I could end up ingesting a Microsoft Nanabot NT for the Intestines and end up with the Blue Skin of Death.

Can't we have more fun stories about people that cover their cases in PETA approved faux fur, obviously photoshopped, fake Apple combination PDA/MP3/GPS prototypes or someone running a beowulf cluster of Aibos powered by the disco beat of the Bee Gees. I got enough forwarded e-mail in my mailbox to freak me out for quite a while. On a positive note, at least no malls blew up on Halloween like that woman from Mississippi/Oregon/Florida/Arizona with the Saudi/Iranian/Iraqi/Palestinians/Egyptian/Sudanese boyfriend (that left abruptly) told her sister/mother/hair stylist/local sheriff would happen.

At least one person who did a Furby Autopsy was not very impressed with the construction of the system.

Some possibly nicer robot kits are available in a number of places, including the Robot Store, Probotics, and Arrick... Of course, there are also the cool Mindstorms, the relatively expensive Aibo (Some hacking info on it can be dug up from the Aibo Site), and the companies listed in this part of the robotics faq

However, Hacking the Furby does give you a relatively inexpensive talking robot with IR input, etc. and ought to be fun... While not the most well constructed system, it does give you some decent features (detects light & sound levels, tilt/inversion of the furby, Infrared and RS232 comms (when upgraded), and some touch sensors on the back, front, and mouth) - especially nice if you get one used, cheap...

It is nice that the reprogrammability kits are being made available, particularly for parents of autistic children (since children can relate to a Furby better than a "regular" hobbyist-grade robot)...

Also, check out the open-source Rossum Project

There are 15,000 different sets of the AIBO AI being taught how to interact with a human environment. One of the neatest things I've come across reading about how people using their AIBOs was from aibosite.com's FAQ. Apparently some AIBO users have found their AIBOs have developed rudimentary face-recognition, even though Sony claims that no such software was installed in untrained AIBOs.

This might light up some people's Big Brother radars, but what if those 15,000 trained AIBOs downloaded the product of their training into a central database at which someone(probably Sony, but what are the possibilities of GPLing the training you've given your AIBO?) can sort through the best of the acquired programs and redistribute them to new AIBO purchasers? With so many individuals constantly training(ie, improving the software of) their AIBOs, wouldn't the software increase dramatically?

Here are a few links that you might find interesting. Xrays of the dog. http://www.nnc.ne.jp/~as212/aibo/x-p.html Aibo disassembled. http://www.aibosite.com/index-s.html Aibo taken apart. (in japanese) http://web.kyoto-inet.or.j p/people/nktks/TEMP1/menu1.htm Robotic Cat - (evolved neural net) http://www.genobyte.com/robokoneko.html