An engineer’s vision
The grassroots of AIBO can be traced back to the early 1990’s.
The technological environment at the time was beginning to experience
the creation of innovative and exciting applications spawning from
the synergy of existing technologies. In the midst of this, Dr.
Doi, the head of Sony’s Digital
Creatures Lab and AIBO’s original progenitor, had a vision
that would spark the groundbreaking creation of Sony Entertainment
Robots.
With the tremendous advances that were being made in terms of computer
processors, artificial intelligence, voice recognition and visual
technology, Dr. Doi had the ingenious idea that these technologies
could be brought together to conceive an autonomous robot. In
particular, artificial intelligence specialists had mastered
the process of receiving and expressing emotions. Encouraged
by this, Sony envisioned not only a functional robot but also
a companion for humans. AIBO would be capable of reacting to
the interactions it would have with its owner, and express many
feelings including happiness and excitement.
The realization of the immense potential sewn up in creating an
autonomous robot, led to the vision that AIBO could one day overtake
the popularity of personal computers and find its rightful place
in the homes and lives of people worldwide. Owing to the extraordinary
progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI), these companion robots
would be able to learn and adapt to the people and environments
they live with, enabling them to better respond to their owners’
functional and emotional needs. After the Personal Computer and
the Internet eras, Sony was comfortably predicting that in the next
decade Entertainment Robots would steal the show.
Overcoming the challenges of a new field
During the early phases of the development in 1992, the Sony design
engineers put in charge of conceiving the robot were faced with
several important challenges that nobody had ever attempted to tackle
in robotics. At that time, robots with cameras had wheels, and required
comprehensive reprogramming for every task or activity they were
involved in.
Some of the design challenges faced, included enabling
the robot to walk on legs and integrating an AI program capable
of interacting with several sensory organs, such as touch, sight
and sound.
By 1997 the first prototypes were beginning to emerge and carried
the fruits of extensive research and development. Dr. Doi’s
team, driven by the ambition of creating a friendly autonomous robot,
had succeeded in overcoming the considerable design challenges they
had experienced. The very first prototype actually had six legs
and was the first step to having a robot on legs.
After this rudimentary model, Dr. Doi’s team sculpted an
entertaining plaster model that carried the first indication of
the shape the entertainment robot would take, or not take!
Several other prototypes were developed, each one getting closer
to the shape of the first AIBO that was launched. Each prototype,
including current models, was evolving on the “OPEN-R"
architecture. This is the standard interface for the entertainment
robot system. It’s greatest advantage lies in the interactions
it allows between hardware and software modules, which significantly
expand the capabilities of Sony entertainment robots. It also enables
a robot body to be modified by simply swapping a hardware module
(head, leg or tail).
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