Sony Aibo: The Robot Dog That Got a Funeral and a Second Life

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In 2006 more than a hundred engineers, executives, and designers gathered to hold a funeral for a discontinued gadget. The gadget was Aibo, Sony's robot dog, born in the company's Computer Science Laboratory in the 1990s. Dr. Toshitada Doi and AI expert Masahiro Fujita began with a prototype called Mutant that tracked a yellow ball and threw karate strikes. Fujita's insight was that a robot built for entertainment could fail and still be loved, because owners would read its mistakes as personality.

This episode tells Aibo's life as a biography. The first model, the ERS-110, launched in May 1999 at $2,500, and all 5,000 units sold online in 20 minutes. Owners raised their dogs from a wobbly puppy stage, hackers taught them to dance, and universities fielded them in RoboCup soccer. Then new chief executive Howard Stringer cut the project, repairs ended, and aging robots began to fail. The story closes with the 2018 return of a cloud-connected Aibo that needs a monthly subscription.

The Life software made each Aibo start as a helpless puppy and mature according to how its owner praised or scolded it through touch sensors.
Composer Nobukazu Takemura blended animal noises with synth sounds so Aibo would seem like its own species instead of a fake dog.
In October 2001 Sony sent a DMCA cease and desist notice to a user known as AiboPet over custom dance code, then backed down and released programming kits.
After Sony stopped repairs in 2014, owners watched worn neck clutches cause what they called droopy head syndrome.
The ERS-1000 has OLED eyes and can recognize up to 100 faces, but its processing happens on Sony's servers over LTE or Wi-Fi.

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