Robot Family in Every Home?

cswilly writes: "Yahoo has a story that Sony wants to see a robot animal in every home. I was wondering if Sony has a total cost of ownership argument for these things? Let's see, $2500 for a robot dog + $100 in electricity oven ten years. A real dog costs, say $1/day to feed, lives ten years for $3650 on food, plus $1000 in vet bills. The robot wins hands down." But keeping it in Mom's Robot Oil isn't cheap either...

Comments

TCO argument flawed

[psych031337]

A sufficiently sized and well-trained dog is able come up with it's own food if you live in a neighborhood sporting enough cats.

OTOH, the Sony petdogs probably have a setting to disable barking at night.

Re:TCO argument flawed

[imipak]

I have an old Onion InfoGraphic on my wall here - I had to have it there, for when my Aibo-owning sucker^w^w techno-obsessive friend comes round - "Why is Aibo so goddam popular?" I'd link but there's no URL on it and I can't find it at t'Onion...

• Keeps all those goddam robot cats out of the yard
• Crude, mechanical simulations of love and affection prepare children for the adult world
• Marks territory with streams of caustic battery acid
• Hoping to teach it to say "Rastro"
• Doesn't vomit batteries back up like real dog
• No need to drown it in brick-filled sack to shut it up
• Hoping to train it to tuck in baby from airport videophone
• Kids kept nagging for a cold, metallic object to hug
• Won't bite the faces off children unless specifically programmed to

Re:Real dogs...

[Leven Valera]

Not that I break into many houses, but if the house I burglar has a robot dog, it's not going to scare me off. I'd take it.

Re:Life Expectancy?

[jandrese]

Have you ever had a real dog (or cat?) They certainly aren't "operational" all day long unless the Aibo has a "sleep and ignore my master" mode. :)

This is doubly true for cats. In fact the AI for a robotic cat should be pretty easy to write:
while true
do
sleep
sleep
sleep
eat
sleep
sleep
sleep
random
done