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Interview with The Mind Behind Aibo
Ant sent us an interesting interview with the man behind the Aibo, Dr. Toshitada Doi. He heads the Digital Creatures Lab at Sony, talks about the history of the Aibo, and where he sees the future of pets going. Speaking as a person who shares his office with an Aibo I think they're neat, but there's still a lot of work to be done before they really break into the mainstream.
..how do you train it to get your newspaper from the newsagents ?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The interview got it's numbers wrong. Only 15,000 have been sold, not 150,000.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
One important fact the article missed, is that the target market for these pets is not necessarily the US. Pets are far more rare and expensive in Japan. Even on a modest income, I could afford acres of land in (rural) America, and stock that land with cheap dogs. In Japan, this would not be possible.
I heard a news story on NPR ( sorry, no link ) that talked about a service that let you rent a dog for the afternoon. You didn't get to take it anywhere, you just walked it around the provided area, but you got to pick the dog you wanted.
Not to say that Americans won't buy this. I would love one, but in Japan, it may actually be a far more practical solution.
The dog uses the Aperios real-time operating system. More information is available on the Sony site.
I thought it was particularly interesting that it is IPv6 ready. Not many people can claim that for their pets! :-)
Hi!
However, I think they're going completely the wrong way about it, to be honest. The more you pre-program, the more rigid and stupid the machine is going to be.
There's really no need to hardcode more than the absolute basics. Anything & everything else could (and should) be learned, with the ability for the software to adapt as necessary.
No, we're not talking Terminator or HAL-9000 technology here. A large, FAST neural net isn't difficult to code. Place the software in virtual reality, for a while (simulate as much time as you like), then dump into the robot's computer. Not that complicated to do.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In the context of the ongoing question of how the internet/technology growth foils closeness and communication of people, how does getting programmable robot dogs fit into this? Not enough falseness on the net, so we bring it into our homes?
But surely that's an overreaction, it's just another hobby, albeit like paying for all of the food your dog will eat in a decade up front...
I just have to wonder how much wonder that there is present in the real, natural world, we're slowly losing contact in our growing fascatination (and growing market ability to be more so with more product lines) with the technological wonders around us...
Blah.
Listen to me Peter, I want this bench. You go sit on that bench over there, and if you're good I'll tell you the rest of
Hi!
This reminds me of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In the future, animals were so rare, that everyone had synthetic pets. Only the rich could afford real pets...
A friend of mine works in a research lab of an educational institution. They got one of these things and I got to play with it for a while.
;) it stands right back up. This one will put one paw in the air as if waving, it stretches and sits and lies down. I will react to people and things in it's environment, although we couldn't get it to play with it's little pink ball. Of course, as the FAQ's for the dog say... "Q: AIBO won't play with his pink ball. A: Maybe AIBO doesn't *want* to play with his pink ball."
;)
My friend told me that they had spent considerable time training the thing to walk and to react by praising (pressing and holding the large button on it's head) it when it did something right or desirable and punishing (tapping the same button) it when it did something undesired.
It walks and if it falls over (or is pushed
It appears to have some level of intelligence and does appear to learn as it goes. If money were no object, I would love to have one of these. It's fun. When you don't want to play with it, you don't have to feel guilty. And it's a wonderful chick magnet.
The next version will be even cooler as when it's battery begins to run down, it will seek and go to it's charging base to recharge itself.
It's an interesting toy for now, but too expensive. I do agree that 10 to 20 years from now, this will be very common in peoples homes.
And just think, Asimov was right again...
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
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
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
CmdrTaco and/or Hemos could write an essay about life with an AIBO. I'm sure that between the two of you, there are plenty of amusing stories accumulated already...
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
After the (apparent) commercial success of the Furby and the AIBO, what do you see as the future of commercial autonomous robotics?
The Kulturwehrmacht
Finding God in a Dog
If this is the man behind the AIBO, then what is he doing back there?
Hey - leave that thing alone, GET OFF!
Hotnutz.com
Starting to drift off topic here, but you mentioned one of my favorite books...
One added element in DADOES, it was considered bad citizenship not to own a live animal. It was everyone's duty to own and care for animals, but average people could not afford anything larger than small pets. To prove their citizenship and empathy (read: humanity) people displayed fake animals on the roofs of their houses.
This book is so good it makes me want to cry.
That would be perfect. You'd have to give him that antenae thing he has though, and the laser weapon. The PBS station here in Albuquerque is showing the episodes with the 1st Romana right now and I'm having all kinds of good dreams about her and the privacy of the Tardis. :)
I know this will get moderated down but my karma can take it and I needed my geek fix for the day.
I'd like to see the Cyberlife people team up with the Sony people and put their seriously advance AI code into a hardware device. (Wow, how about a "real live" Norn? That would be awesome. They'd just have to have a longer lifespan than that in the game - about 8 hours.
I think the most interesting aspect of the Cyberlife technology is the synthesis of a "biophysical" system in software - they have code to simulate digestive, circulatory, immunological systems, etc, completely outside of the neural network that makes up their cognitive system.
If you could marry that concept with hardware to emulate it (i.e. the battery is getting low so the feedback to the brain is "I'm hungry!") I bet you could come up with some seriously complicated and complex emergent behaviours.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Well, they're not available at all, but if you have $2,500 it looks like eBay prices have settled down a bit, you might be able to get one for around that, or for a very slight premium.
D
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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?
The translation of "aibo" (romaji Japanese), according to Jeffrey's J/E Dictionary defines what qualities we all admire in a real dog: /. it really makes you think : ) At least, it should...
-cherish the memory of; yearn for
-love; attachment; adoration
-companion
-partner; pal; accomplice
Now, this may seem OT to some of you, but I read through various postings here, saying all the Aibo lacks dramatically is the ability to love it's owner back, like a real dog. I just happened to look up the name...and seeing these definitions in correspondance with what was said here on
Mmm...Sony.
And yes, an Aibo is a great chick magnet. We are known for our expensive tastes ^-^
miyax