Slashdot Mirror
Sony Announces Robotic Dog
Dr. Wild wrote in
to tell us that Sony has announced their
portable dog/robot.
We've mentioned this here a few times before, but now its official.
The article actually spends most of the space talking about
how the robot might be some crafty trick to sneak Sony
technology into the US market place. I just thought it
was a little robotic dog. Guess I'm naive.
Saw it on CNN last night. Looked pretty slick - the "dog" can right itself if it falls over, apparently it does respond to voice input. And, you lift up the tail and open a door to put in a long black battery pack.
I'll name my "Rags", after the robot dog in Woody Allen's Sleeper.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
on the link thoughtfully supplied by an ac i found the faq and some other other stuff. i looked to see what happens if the designers and engineers had supplied any way of turning aibo off in case of an emergency...yep sure enough.... i found it
Q. Why does aibo have a pause button on it's chest?
A.The pause button on ABIOS's chest is used to stop AIBO in any emergencies, and also used to rivive (sic) AIBO when it has put itself into deep sleep.
it made me think that if they are starting to develop robotics with 'emotion' like behavour, are they going to read asimovs, 'i robot' and utilise the 3 laws of robotics or are they going to have a problem with their machines much like the beasty boys clip for hello nasty?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
It even comes with that proprietary memory stick discussed before. Is that the technology they are trying to sneak in the US? May the dog bite it.
Anyhow, it does not mention what kind of sensors for negotiating the environment this dog sports. It would also be interesting how developed the locomotion is. Can it run? Jump? Play catch? If it had seperate servos for each foot, there would be significant possibilities for a programmable dog. Fetching the paper unaided, for instance!
Those dogs are pretty cool. I have friends at UPenn who are training [read coding] a fleet of them to play soccer on their own. pretty damn cool if you ask me. Thee big issue is a lot of the functions are currently "inaccessable"... read sony ain't tellin them what they need to know [like calls to things like leg actuaters]. From what I was hearing it's a pretty cool project [hi Bo!]
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
It appears that this writer had some kind of a preconception about this robot dog, which he couldn't back up with his reporting, but decided to go with anyway--that this robot dog is trying to sneak Sony tech into our homes.
If that is the mission of the robot dogs, he might have asked himself about their VAIO computers, Trinitron monitors, Walkmen, portable CD players, Playstations,and even credit cards.
Sony has been pretty damned successful at sneaking their technology into my life--and that of many or most other Americans.
As for the robodog--it's fairly dumb, doesn't appear to have much upgrade potential (from my brief investigation), and has little, if any market potential. Way too expensive, for one thing. They'll probably sell a few thousand of this model.
But check back in three years. I suspect Sony will be selling a robot assistant that tags along in your house, offers advice and info, and does simple tasks.
This is *just a test marketing project* y'all. Think of it as a public beta. They will do extensive research on the problems people run into with this version, and come back to market in a few years with an amazing toy for rich geeks.
\
Sheesh.
F /...
How many time do we have to read "well according to my brief glance" or "I dont know if it does X but here is what I think." Just go and read the damn sony site. You can get all kinds of info from it. I swear some of the people that post on slashdot are the most lazy morons since the days of VBBS.
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Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
This "sneaking technology" thing is absurd to begin with. I seriously doubt that Sony make the Playstation in order to get some kind of foothold for an invasion. IIRC, Sony was originally even working with Nintendo on a CD-based game console until Nintendo backed out, but Sony wanted to go ahead with it anyway and try competing with Nintendo.
They settled on CD-ROM for cost and convenience reasons, almonst certainly not so they could upgrade to DVD and turn the console into a home entertainment center in the future.
This is just absurd.
Just what my sick sense of humor needed.
Last thing I need is a dog that leaks battery acid on my rugs.
And the metal splinters from having it hump your guests leg... Sheesh! A lawsuit waiting to happen.
I wonder if it will come with all the standard phaser settings - 'stun' for the mailman, 'kill' for the Jehova's Witnesses.
And here you thought having the real dog FIXED was traumatic. Imagine having to go through that $$$ experience every time in rains!
Can one of these be R/C driven by a Pilot? How about the seeing-eye-dog possibilities?
I can see it now, robotic dogs chasing Furbys up binary trees!! Aaaargh!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
If you read the website that was posted about the details for the robot you will see that it is based on 6 emotions and 4 insticts. Depending on what "mood" it is in determines its behavior. It also mentions that the robot goes through different stages, infancy all the way up to adulthood. Depending on how you treat the robot during these stages determines its "personality".
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I have no clue on the anti-Sony sentiment being suggested...
But give it a couple years, and I might get one just for novelty.
Anyone watch Doctor Who? Remember K9?
Even cooler, if the Aibo could be given Kitt's personality. Assuming you aren't as stupid as Hasslehoff and always getting into trouble.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Interesting story, crappy article. I am amazed that any one would allow that to go out with their name on it. The guy talks to 3 different people all of who say they doubt that the toy is a trick to break into the market, yet he still writes an article about Sony doing just that. Maybe it was supposed to be funny. Too bad it wasn't.
By the way I think that the release of the toy is actually quite interesting. I just wish there had been more content about what it is capable of. What are the capabilities? Does it bark? Does it recognize voice commands?
Oh YEAH!
Look ahead at the implications of this project.
SOny has produced a viable musculo/skeltal system for a consumer robot. This is the important thing.
Not whether it is voice activated, it will be. Not whether it is programable, it will be. This thing was the last step impeeding REAL consumer robotics, the rest is just evolutionary.
Imagine, a pet that is also your pda/phone/secretary. Project the project for the nice man boy! C'Mon, this stuff is gonna rule, and it won't be SF anymore, this will happen in a handful of years!
Personaly, I want a small dragon, with nice titanium scales, that I can have perched on my shoulder, to light my cigarettes.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Cats are more independent. You could start making software for a cat by making Oneko, the X cat, more responsive to its environment and give it more emotions than boredom. Not that its boredom can't be useful, as PURR-PUSS uses boredom as a trigger to try a more creative action, while learning [Andreae] by trial and error.
There is also a lot more stuff on adaptive behavior and machine learning out there.
Hmm. Robot Dogs? Somehow I keep seeing the Rat Dogs from Neil Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'. I'm sure he'd get chills seeing this come to reality.
...and Neil, if you're reading this (as we all know you're a slashdot reader)... 2 thumbs up for that book.
"the sky above the port is the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel"
http://www.world.sony.com/robot/top.html for all the information you need.
IMHO this is just too cool; web site explains all
Trick people into thinking they're buying a dog, then secretly load it up with subversive Sony technology! Maybe it's got a Sony "nightshot" vision system, and is beaming images of naked American chicks back to Japan!
Basically, that is what the article said. It seemed to me like a nice little random code in the neural networking of this little toy. What the article actually said was that the "dog" was presented with a ball and chose not to play with it.
"Alt-F4 that's for quitting" quoth Dan_Wood