New AIBO Demo'd

RalfM writes: "The new AIBO has been demo'd, and with this version you can watch live footage from it's cameras via radio link, radio control it, give it booster packs, and a whole swag of other goodies." I still dig on AIBO, but until it is smart enough to home in on its base station and recharge itself when its batteries are running low, it's hard to consider AIBO ready for prime time.

Comments

Cool, but...

[MotorMachineMercenar]

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.

Want a real robot pet?

[cr0sh]

I still dig on AIBO, but until it is smart enough to home in on its base station and recharge itself when its batteries are running low, it's hard to consider AIBO ready for prime time.

First off, get off your duff and decide to build your robot "pet", instead of buying one. While you may or may not have the skills needed, they can be learned and developed. After you have built your robot "pet", and actually see it working - you will know true joy at seeing something you built actually doing things - perhaps even things that make it seem "pet-like".

But where to start?

You could start with familiar books on the shelf at a local Bookstar or Amazon, such as The Robot Builder's Bonanza: 99 Inexpensive Robotics Projects by Gordon McComb (ISBN 0-07-136296-7). However, while I strongly reccommend this book, it focuses more on the mechanical side of things (which _is_ important), but not the software/logic side, which for behavioral systems, will be very important (otherwise it just becomes a programmed or r/c car with a "robot" look). So what should one do?

If you want to build a real robotic pet, here are the books you should have in your library of robotic books (among others, of course):

The David L. Heiserman "Series":

Build Your Own Working Robot (Hardbound: ISBN 0-8306-6841-1 - Softbound: ISBN 0-8306-5841-6), TAB Book 841

How to Build Your Own Self-Programming Robot (Hardbound: ISBN 0-8306-9760-8 - Softbound: ISBN 0-8306-1241-6), TAB Book 1241

Robot Intelligence (with experiments) (Hardbound: ISBN 0-8306-9685-7 - Softbound: ISBN 0-8306-1191-6), TAB Book 1191

Though looong out of print, these three volumes are essential, and should be read in the order given, as they build upon one another. The final book in the series picks up where the prior one left off, but goes in the direction of software based "virtual" robots - an early form of virtual artificial life, if you will. However, it is clearly seen that the author intended the reader to apply these programs toward the robot designed and built in the prior book - and thus take them from the virtual to the "real".

Another book worth exploring is called "How to Build Your Own Working Robot Pet" by Frank DaCosta (TAB Book 1141 - sorry, no ISBN, my copy is shipping currently) - also long out of print. From what I remember in the edition I read, it details how to build a small robot with very definite pet-like qualities (whereas Heiserman focused on what he termed "Evolutionary Adaptive Machine Intelligence" or EAMI for short). I am not sure if there was any contact between Heiserman and DaCosta, but both of their books, and a host of others (notably ones by Edward L. Safford) were published around the same time frame by TAB Books. All of the devices described by DaCosta and Heiserman had the capability (depending on your skills) of auto-recharging themselves when their batteries got low (indeed, Heiserman believed such capability was a paramount thing for an autonomous system, and went into great detail on the design of the system and the "coding" and logic for it).

What is most amazing about all of these authors was the time when they were doing this, which was the late 1970's through early 1980's. Such robotic experimentation peaked at around the mid-1980's, then for unknown reasons, went underground. Hobby robotics is now starting to pick up again with a new generation, but the newcomers seem to have lost the "history" behind their experimentations.

These old hobby robot experiments still have great value for experimentors today. Read the books I have outlined above, and apply the principles (I would not suggest anyone to apply the exact methods used in building the original robots - as it just wouldn't be cost effective anymore - both of the first two Heiserman books effectively detailed building small computer systems, the first nearly entirely logic based, with a very Brooks-like subsumptive architecture, long before Brooks - and the second a true 8-bit computer system, using Intel's 8085 CPU!). However, these principles could easily be applied to a BASIC Stamp, or to nearly any other microcontroller - or you could go a step further and use an on-board laptop motherboard or similar.

These are the books I would recommend - apply the "old-school" knowledge of Heiserman, DaCosta, and if you want, Safford - and meld it with a little of Brooks and McComb - imagine the possibilities!

Finally, while you are at it - think of this for me:

Note these older TAB Books - how well laid out they were, how clear the diagrams and details were, the way everything is described, as well as the graphic art. Then take another look at today's so-called "technical" books: hardly will you find an equivalent. Even a recent look between McComb's first and second edition of his "Robot Builder's Bonanza" (I have both) will show you what has occurred - a true loss in quality (the first edition was published by TAB Books, the second by McGrawHill, under some "TAB Electronics" name).

I also want you to think and wonder about where these early robots, and their builders, went - were they relegated to a scrap yard (the robots, not the builders)? Do their builders still own them? Are they in a museum some where?

I seriously wonder about these things - I have a ton of old robot books from the early 1970's to the mid-1980's describing these robots, and there is hardly any information about where they ended up at! History lost! Both hobbiest and commercial ventures seem gone to history (I tend to wonder, on the commercial end, what happened to the Mosher/GE Hardiman "suit", as well as Odetics, Inc's ODEX-1?). Tod Lofburow's (sp?) KIM-1 based triangular hobby robot (which he described in another TAB book, if you want to look it up). I remember in another book a fascinating picture of a six-foot tall humanoid appearing robot named C.H.A.R.L.I.E., who was named after the builder, but the acronym stood for something, which wasn't detailed in the book, as the book was less of a technical book, and more of a "coffee table"-type book - where did this robot end up at? Are all of these devices collecting dust? Will they end up on Ebay?

Please - if anyone has ANY answers, I would most appreciate them...