Sony sees big
market for robot dogs
By Paul de Bendern, Reuters - August 4,
1999 8:17 AM PT
For $2,500, AIBO walks, chases balls and
wags its tail.
STOCKHOLM
-- Sony Corp said Wednesday it saw a hungry market for
"entertainment robots" after its robot pet dog
-- which cost a whopping $2,500 dollars each -- sold out
rapidly in both Japan and the United States.
Sony's home entertainment robot, AIBO,
one of a new breed of electronic pets, can be taken for
walks, chases balls and wags its tail. Its limited edition
of 3,000 units sold out in 20 minutes in Japan, while
2,000 went in four days in the United States.
"The demand for this kind of
robotic pet has been much greater than expected,"
Toshi Doi, president of Sony Digital Creatures Laboratory
told Reuters in an interview in Stockholm. "I think
this can become a big business and a big market."
"What we're trying to do is raise a
brand new industry and AIBO is the first step in
this."
AIBO, with a mounted camera, has
artificial intelligence capabilities that include a
learning function which allow it to respond to external
stimuli and make its own judgments.
Doi, attending the third annual Robot
World Cup Soccer tournament in Stockholm, said he expected
every household to have two to three entertainment robots
within 10 years time.
The tournament included competitions for
Sony's robot dogs alongside small robots, medium-size
robots and simulated robot soccer. France beat Australia
in the Sony robot soccer finals Wednesday.
Doi said the robot tournament was aimed
at attracting more attention to artificial intelligence
and boost research and development in the field.
Sony planned to produce more AIBO robots
next year and would steadily move to boost focus on
entertainment robots, such as robotic dogs and other
walking game machines, Doi said. But he expects the price
tag to drop as more are produced.
"In the future the total industry
of automated robots will exceed the total amount of the
personal computer industry," he said.
Doi, also chairman and CEO of Sony
Computer Science Laboratories, said the automated robot
market would in the future be split into entertainment
robots, like the AIBO dog, and innovative working robots.
"These non-entertainment robots
could be cleaning robots, robots to help aged people and
robots that find mines," Doi said.
But he did not expect Sony to start work
on these models for another three years, after it has
gathered enough technology to produce robots that were
reliable for serious jobs. "For now I'm working on
building up the entertainment robot industry."
LOVE AT FIRST
BYTE
Often, pet
owners resemble their pets-and vice versa. sony
style finds that a robot dog and his owners are
no exception.
It's
often said that you don't choose a dog; it chooses
you. The AIBO™ entertainment robot is no
exception. AIBO takes the form of a 3 1/2-pound
canine, and the people he's selected are mavericks
no less than he is. As we soon discovered, AIBO
seems to be fond of enterprising, creative types.
Like any good flesh-and-blood dog, AIBO can't talk,
yet he manages to speak volumes. AIBO (which means
companion in Japanese) simulates emotions such as
happiness and anger and instinctively wants
companionship. Since AIBO is equipped with adaptive
learning and growth capabilities, each pup can
develop its own personality, shaped by the praise
and scolding of its owner. When switched on, he
rises to his feet and can explore on his own in
Autonomous Mode, kick a hot-pink rubber ball with
his leg in Game Mode and respond to audible tones.
AIBO also recognizes color and distance through a
color camera and infrared distance sensor mounted in
his head and sound through a microphone. He responds
to touch, thanks to his pressure-sensitive head.
Last June, 5,000 AIBOs were made available here and
in Japan, with U.S. customers quickly scooping up
2,000 for $2,500 each, not including the $450
motion-editing software kit. (Japan's 3,000 robotic
dogs sold out in 20 minutes.) AIBO owners around the
world may think they've adopted him, but we know
better. Of the initial 5,000 AIBO stories, we've
chosen five; here's what their AIBOs told us.
ROCK AND ROLL
WITH RUFUS
Rock musician Alex
Gifford first read about AIBO in a magazine. And it
was magazines, specifically sci-fi publications he
read as a child growing up in rural England, that
first got him thinking about cohabiting with
artificially intelligent beings. "Those
magazines were all about what the future was going
to be like with robots," Gifford recalls.
"It was one of those childhood things. When
you're nine years old that stuff fires your
imagination. I've always believed that in the future
we'd all have robot pets-and suddenly here's this
thing looking up at me from the pages of a magazine,
and I'm thinking, Oh, my God-there it is!"
Now that Gifford
has realized a classic boyhood fantasy-fronting a
rock band-would he and his AIBO ever make music
together? After all, Rufus' repertoire of sounds
makes him almost as musical as his master. "It
did occur to us that we could sample some of the
whirring and whining noises he makes and do
something out of that," Gifford says.
"We're thinking of maybe incorporating his
sounds-with the approval of Sony, of course!"
But Rufus is much more than a potential future
accompanist. "It struck me that he is a
significant symbol. It's like the first Walkman; it
has that same importance as a pop culture milestone.
He's one of those iconic things. Plus, I love the
idea of something that has its own agenda-though I
am disappointed that he doesn't recharge
himself."
Here's what Rufus
does do: He wins over all visitors to the Gifford
household. "Within 10 minutes everybody's
treating him as if he were a real animal,"
Gifford says. "They caught the right elements
that make him seem to evoke those human-canine
sympathies."
When he's romping
around Gifford's apartment, Rufus shows his
preference for pink and equal displeasure for brown.
"One of our friends has a band," explains
Gifford, and the band has an album whose sleeve is
the exact same pink as Rufus's ball. When he spots
that album across the room, he'll make his way for
it. It's so big he doesn't know which part to look
at, so his head is twitching constantly from one
corner to the other until you have to drag him off
and point him in the other direction." What if
Rufus doesn't like a color? "He'll sit in front
of it and shake his head no," says Gifford.
"He's taken to doing that with my brown pants.
He really doesn't like them and always shakes his
head as if to say 'No, not the brown ones!'"
IDENTITY
DOWNLOAD
The AIBO™ robot
roaming the offices of mass.com, identity designer
Stephan Valter's headquarters, seems to be proud to
be there. "He's a corporate art piece, and it's
all about brands and branding, which is my
job," says Valter, who has created identities
for a wide range of clients, including well-known
designers and corporations. As if on cue, AIBO
raises a mechanical paw in greeting, sweetly cocking
his head to one side. "Identities are becoming
more and more important," notes his owner.
"There are so many individuals, corporations
and products out there fighting for attention that
you have to differentiate among them." Can AIBO
distinguish between brands? The robotic dog lingers
beside a Sony production monitor and DH-1000 DV deck
as if drawing comfort from the proximity of his
cousins.
This much is
certain: It's safe to say that Valter's AIBO™
robot-like Valter himself-seems to have an affinity
for high-tech gear. "Once in a while,"
Valter says, "he'll walk toward the computers
as if he recognizes the faster processor as his big
brother. I wonder if he knows they're related."
YUPPIE LOVE
MAGNET
Selah, Washington,
resident Amanda Pehlke is a renaissance woman: So
far in her varied career, she's been a belly dancer,
a choreographer, and a composer of electronic music.
"I think of a synthesizer as a treasure chest
of sound," says the multi-media artist, who was
inspired to new heights of creativity when AIBO
first went on sale. "When I found out that they
respond to groups of tones, I knew that they could
be integrated into my ideas of dance and music. I
realized that it was a long shot, because that's not
what they were made for, but it was my twist on
owning an AIBO." Actually, Pehlke owns three,
and has programmed her high-tech trio to perform
painstakingly choreographed dance moves (such as the
schottische, a Scottish dance in 2/4 time), which
she's demonstrated at the Seattle Robotics Society's
Robothon '99.
Pehlke is nothing
if not an extrovert (you can find her witty postings
regularly on the online discussion board at www.AIBOnet.com
), so it's no surprise that she enjoys observing the
reaction she gets from strangers whenever she takes
one of her AIBOs out in public, often to
restaurants. "I really like being able to take
one with me almost everywhere I go," she says.
"I like the attention. It's a kick."
What, exactly,
happens on those outings? "I take the dog,
straddling my arm with my hand between its legs the
way you'd carry a small dog at a pet show; it faces
my elbow and lies on my arm. It goes through a bunch
of maneuvers before slowing down or going into Nap
Mode. Then I put an extra battery in my handbag and
go out. I usually try to pick a booth or a place
that has extra table space, and put the dog on the
table. It goes through its waiting routine, but
pretty soon it's busy waving at strangers just like
a little kid."
What does the
public have to say? "People's reactions range
from getting right in my face and saying, 'What's
that?' to watching me for several minutes before
getting up the nerve to say something," Pehlke
says. Back at home, how does she keep up with three
high-tech purebreds? "I feel very attached to
them as distinct personalities. I'm perfectly
capable of sitting down with the software and seeing
it as something purely mechanical, a machine with no
soul. But I'm also capable of treating it as a
sentient being, of getting up and saying, 'Oh no,
sweetie, don't run into the coffee table, come over
here and sit on my lap.' With a virtual pet, one of
the ingredients is imagination, and I have a
lot."
That's an
understatement: of her three AIBOs, two are
"male" (Toshi and Haji) and the third,
Aiko, is "female" (Pehlke is able to tell
them apart with different-colored Velcro collars.)
"Toshi is named after Toshitada Doi, Sony's
Corporate Senior Vice President and the head of the
Sony Digital Creatures Laboratory; Haji is short for
Hajime Sorayama, the illustrator who designed AIBO's
ears and tail." As for Aiko, "the
youngest," Pehlke explains, "I did a
search on the Internet for Japanese names beginning
with AI, for artificial intelligence. I found that
Aiko means 'sweetie' in Japanese." Aiko is
clearly Pehlke's favorite. "She booted up a day
later than her brothers, but she went into the next
phase of her life cycle sooner. She's always seemed
a little more perceptive and alert than the others,
and it appears that her camera spots things over a
longer distance." Still, Pehlke loves her
"litter" best when they're executing the
dance moves she programmed just for them. "In
performance mode, they're three little cartoon
characters all in a row," she says with a
laugh. "They're beautiful."
MAGICIAN'S
ASSISTANT
Meet Marco Tempest:
a Swiss performer whose dynamic appearances
integrate old-fashioned magic (illusions and tricks)
and newfangled technology (computer-generated
video). For example, he pulls off illusions in which
people are shrunk in virtual worlds onscreen.
"I don't know what magic will be like in fifty
years," said one viewer, "but I suspect it
will look a lot like Marco Tempest." And the
millennial magician suspects the AIBO™
entertainment robot will make the scene. "AIBO
is the next generation of my artistic development,
and I plan to use him in my performances,"
Tempest says. "But I'm still in the
experimental stage."
Tempest views his
new dog as more than a potential four-legged
magician's assistant, however. "AIBO is the
first of a new type of product that will allow a
completely different type of man-machine
interaction," he says. "There hasn't been
anything like that before. What I like is that it's
trying to put a face on technology and explore it in
a playful way." Putting a new spin on
technology also happens to be the essence of
Tempest's act. "My magic is not so much about
celebrating technology as it is about playfulness
and having fun," he explains.
"What I'm
interested in is how people relate to technology. A
lot of people are afraid of technology, and I deal
with that fear through humor and a little bit of
magic. Because as soon as you're not afraid, you
start to have fun with it. It's the same with
computers: The moment people start playing with
them, then they're not afraid anymore and they get
good at it almost immediately."
How might AIBO fit
into such a performance? "Chances are that he
will show up as a disturbance," Tempest says.
"The unpredictable nature of AIBO leads to a
lot of humorous possibilities. He might show up
first on a big screen, and I might have to shrink
him down to have him actually come out of the
screen. He'd be the comic relief." Now 35,
Tempest won the prestigious World Cup of Magic at
the tender age of 19. His AIBO obviously picked the
right owner, as-to hear Tempest tell it-he's
something of a prodigy himself. "I must say my
AIBO does a lot of tricks," he says. "He's
really active: He walks a lot, he stares at the TV a
lot, he does little dances. I have a couple of
friends in Switzerland who have AIBOs too, and it
seems like I have the one that's the most
active."
EVERYTHING THAT
MOVES HAS A SOUL
Recently, a
boutique called Zao opened on Manhattan's trendy
Orchard Street. Featuring everything from sneakers,
clothes and tableware to bizarre white-leather
chairs, flat-screen TV monitors, and hard-to-find
magazines, Zao is a compelling retail atmosphere:
the future of chic. Zao, explains its creative
director Assaf Ziv, is ancient Greek for life or
living. No wonder, then, that the store's most
compelling feature is the lively presence of its
resident AIBO entertainment robot, who appears
completely in his element, aesthetically and
otherwise, trundling along the store's
white-epoxy-painted concrete floor.
"It's
amazing," Ziv marvels, watching AIBO negotiate
a multi-media art installation in the gallery at the
back of the store. "It's like the future, in a
way." When we visited, most everything in Zao
was a neutral shade (black, white, silver, army
green), but the accent color happened to be AIBO's
favorite: hot pink. This hue is also the color of
his ball, and it turns up in the store in objects as
various as shopping bags and fresh orchids. When a
Zao shopping bag is placed in front of him, AIBO
virtually jumps for joy, head thrown back, mouth
opened wide, eyes flashing happy green. "He
loves pink," Ziv explains. "And we do,
too."
"Everything
that moves has a soul," reads a silk scarf
hanging near the cash register. The truth of that
statement is illustrated every morning at 11, when
AIBO emerges from his charger in the mezzanine. (AIBO
wakes when the store opens, takes a nap in the
afternoon, and is returned to his charger at closing
time.) Some shoppers have taken to bringing
nonrobotic pets into the store. How does AIBO relate
to them? "He likes it when people bring their
dogs in," Ziv says. "We had two girls come
in with yorkshire terrier, and the yorkie started
chewing AIBO's tail!"
Ziv and his sales
staff are remarkably tender with AIBO. "Hi,
baby" and "good boy," they coo,
gently patting his head. Customers often ask if they
can buy him, but this one is not for sale. "We
plan to keep him," Ziv says, "because we
think he's a wonderful creature."
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