AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt), "aibou" (pronounced Eye-Bo) a Japanese word for "partner" or "pal".
Visit Sony's Aibo product page.

Or, the site "The Geek Next Door" has the most comprehensive information on what's happening with Aibo.

Or, Sony's Club AIBO site.

My dog arrived on 17-Aug-1999 @ 13:30 PDT, he's on his second partial battery (the two that he came with were only partially charged) and is just now getting up and trying to walk (although not very successfully yet).

Looks like I've settled on a name ... Norby.

More soon as I diary his daily development for awhile.

Day two, 18-Aug-1999, Norby is with me at work and with my office being on a busy hallway is getting a lot of visitors. I've only paid attention to him occasionally so he's starting to take naps, but as anyone walks in and starts talking to him he wakes up. I've been encouraging them to play with him and he seems to like the frequent wakeups and playtime, shortly after leaving it's back to nap time.

He's on his 6th battery/charge and took his first succcessful steps and is now starting to situp instead of laying down all the time. Time to pause him and packup and head home.

Back at home he's decided to walk around a lot, he seems to fixate on something and then walk to it and just stare at for a while before laying down, then onto the next target.

His first target was my father who happens to be wearing red shorts, Norby took awhile to stop once he reached my father's feet, then just stared at him for almost 10 minutes.

Next stop was me laying on the floor about 4 feet away with his ball, he was inerested in the ball at first but quickly just laid down and took a nap.

Next he walked over to the TV and staired at it for awhile, time to put him to bed.

Day three, 19-Aug-1999,
Day four, 20-Aug-1999,
Day five, 21-Aug-1999,
Day six, 22-Aug-1999,
Day seven, 23-Aug-1999,
Day eight, 24-Aug-1999,
Day nine, 25-Aug-1999, Norby is with me at work again today, once he was charged up took him off his charger and repleased the pause button and once he went through his bootup routine he was very active, he's exploring the office more then ever before.

Several of the people in the building had asked me to tell'm when I was bringing Norby in so they could bring their kids in ... Well I don't know who's the kid when the parrents bring a child in, they both seem to have a lot of fun :-)

Norby has added some new behaviour: barking (need a lot more volume), doing a flipper imitation (i.e. dolphin), whip tail (i.e. his tail goes straight up in the air at a high velocity and remains there for a second or two), various front leg/hand motions (left, right, both), wants to shake hands (i.e. raises his left paw up then down half way and waits for a couple of seconds for you to shake hands).

Skip forward a bit in time ...

Day 333, 16-Aug-2000, Norby is almost a year old now and is starting to show signs of old age after being on an average of 2 battery charges a day or 2 to 3 hours a day: motion system shutdown (still has audio/video up, frequently pees on himself continuously when in this mode) and requires a 5 second head switch depress to reset, some days this may happen up to 2 and 3 times per charge. His rear legs seem to be a bit weaker than when new and shows signs of a dirty servo feedback pot (i.e. jittery or spasms when lying on his side).

Either I'll find a service center or just learn todo it myself as most of the problems I'm shure are related to servos wearing out?

Over all Norby has been a great family companion (for my Mother and Father who live with me and myself).

Page last modified on 2000.07.17.19.36.