Sony's Aibo robot dog
It is almost a year ago that Sony discontinued production of the Aibo robot dog, at the end of March 2007 the official website (www.sony.net/Products/aibo/) closed, marking the end of a 7 year run of the amazing Aibo entertainment robot.
The later versions of Aibo can play digital music and dance along with it, connect wirelessly to a computer so that you can view the world through Aibo's eyes/camera. You can still get an Aibo second-hand for about £550, try eBay for one. As Sony have stopped making them, Aibo's are becoming increasingly more rare and collectible. Aibo got it's name from Artificial Intelligence roBOt, and it is also the Japanese word for Companion or Friend. Which seems pretty fitting for the little robo-dog.
There are even Aibo owners meetings held pretty regularly in the UK and elsewhere. Some pretty crazy numbers of Aibo's in one place, the picture on the right has around 100 Aibo's at a UK based meeting of owners & Aibos held on 25th to 26th March 2006. Found on www.aiboworld.com.If you are interested in meeting Aibo fans & owners around the world, Sony have some Aibo related website links on their site at http://support.sony-europe.com/aibo/6_1_3_aibolinks.asp?language=en. 
Aibo was going to be succeeded by the quirky-looking Qrio humanoid entertainment robot. He can dance, walk on uneven surfaces and features much of the same sensor and voice/sound/face recognition technology used in Aibo. But unfortuanately Sony decided not to sell the Qrio as it would have cost as much as a family car for each unit, it remains just a prototype and is being discontinued like the Aibo. A great shame, but it is very likely that Sony is continuing to develop their robot technology behind closed doors in their research labs.Find out more about QRIO - Quest for Curiosity >> Sony led the way for companies like WowWee, who produce a hugely popular line of much more affordable semi-intelligent, controllable robot toys including Robosapien, Roboreptile and the brand new FlyTech DragonFly. Email this story to a friend  Add this link to:            
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