Hands on: Sony Aibo review
A smart pooch with a pricey pedigree
Buying Sonyâs new AI-powered robo-puppy, Aibo, will cost you about the same as a purebred, show-dog: $2,899 (or around ÂŁ2,250, AU$3,950).
We got the chance to play with the pooch at Sonyâs New York City headquarters, where the rebooted, 6th-generation robo-pups melted our jaded journalist hearts, due in no small part to its expressive eyes, dog-like behavior and powerful, cutting-edge innards.
Running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 840 and Amazonâs cloud-based AWS server, Aibo can memorize up to 100 faces and learn an endless stream of new tricks â and while its intelligence certainly showed through during our demo, the tech we saw wasnât without its kinks.
Ultimately, did a slew of sensors and neat party tricks justify its expensive pedigree? Could it stand shoulder-to-adorable-shoulder with the best toy robots on the market today? And did Aibo ever actually replace the fleshy puppers weâve come to love?
Hereâs what we found out.
Price and release date
Back at CES 2018, Sony suggested that Aibo would retail for less than $2,000 in the US. Now, it looks like Sony thinks its newest breed of robot should cost much more.
The Aibo First Litter Edition robot will launch this September for $2,899 (around ÂŁ2,269, AU$3,999). For that price, you receive a three-year Cloud subscription, access to the My aibo app, some toys â a pink ball, paw pads and an Aibone â a charging station and a customized dog tag.
This bundle will go on sale in the US ometime in September, and your dog would arrive âin time for the holidaysâ, according to Sonyâs reps. An earlier version of this article said Sony was bringing the Aibo to Europe, but Sony has since confirmed thatâs not the case.
The discrepancy between Sonyâs estimated and actual price makes us wonder what kind of value Sony ascribes to its Amazon-backed AI Cloud service. With it, your pup will have access to the collective machine learning of every Aibo, which will help it become more intelligent over time in areas like object recognition.
Of course, your Aibo would also upload its experiences to the Cloud, forming a âdatabase of memoriesâ. Note that this may or may not include uploading some data about your house and family to the Cloud for the dog to ârememberâ, which some might see more as an invasion of privacy than a perk.
Right out of the gate, Aibo will be a premium pooch. If you wait you may find a cheaper deal on Aibo down the road, but youâll likely have to pay extra for the cloud-based edge learning (and cute accessories) that make Aibo special.
Design, specs and stats
All that said, if youâre looking for a smarter breed of dog, Aibo is it. To navigate around your house, Aibo uses two cameras, six sensors, a motion detector, a light detector and four microphones â and, using the cameras, Aibo is able to memorize up to 100 faces, and can also apparently recognize and respond to your pets.
Under its adorable exterior, Aibo comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB ROM memory to go with its Snapdragon 820 processor. All of that hardware will help Aibo understand what itâs seeing through its cameras and pass data along to the cloud.
Speaking of the cloud, Aibo connects to the Cloud over your Wi-Fi network, but it can also connect via AT&Tâs LTE network if you take it outside your home. Aibo has a three-hour battery life, which will let it wander around your house for much longer than most other robots currently available. Itâll then automatically head back to its charging station for at least a couple of hours.
In both some good and bad news, Aibo isnât open for community development â for now, Aibo doesnât appear to have a publicly available SDK for developers.
As youâd expect, Aibo responds to voice commands like âShake!â, âSit!â or âPlay dead!â ⌠however, thatâs assuming it chooses to obey you. When we ordered one puppy to sit, its ears tilted back, which means the AI has detected a voice command. But instead of sitting, it just looked at us and barked.
That was a common theme of the event: the naughty pups consistently ignored about half of our commands. We were told each time to remember that these Aiboâs were âfresh out of the boxâ and ânot yet matureâ. Like any puppy, they need training and positive reinforcement before they understand and obey.
This struck us as rather convenient, since we could never be sure if the problem lay with the dogâs personality or with the mic not properly picking up our command. But we did notice that our dog was more likely to perform easier commands, like âSitâ, than more advanced commands, like âdanceâ.
Apparently, it will take your Aibo about a year to âfully matureâ and become more loyal and obedient. So an impatient, irresponsible child may not be the best choice for raising an Aibo (just like with a real puppy, itâs a heady responsibility).
Still, rewarding our dog when it did obey us was undeniably endearing. Each Aibo has touch sensors on its head, beneath its chin and on its back. When you pet one, it will react with obvious pleasure, closing its eyes and leaning into the petting.
Its plodding pace made itself most obvious when trying to play âcatchâ with Aibo. We held out a pink, sensor-filled ball in front of Aibo, encouraging him to roll it back to us. Staring at us for a few seconds, it lifted its ears as it processed the command; then, thinking for a couple seconds, it looked down at the ball, slowly reached out a paw, placed it against the ball, and pushed it forward about six inches towards us.
Surprisingly, though, Aibo arguably handled itself better without any props, with some tricks showing it capable of complex, choreographed movements. Our personal favorite was âif youâre happy and you know itâŚâ, which had the dog barking along to the popular melody.
Youâll be able to download dozens of Aiboâs tricks from your smartphone app as Sony releases them over time. Youâll also use the app to customize your Aibo, determining things like its gender, voice pitch and eye color.
You can also train your Aibo with custom tricks. Move your Aiboâs paws manually into any position you like and then click its paw buttons, and it will remember that pose. Then say âShow me your new trick!â to have it reenact your favorite yoga pose or dance move. Unfortunately, itâll only remember one custom trick at a time.
Eventually, Sonyâs idealized Aibo will memorize faces and voices, and will be more likely to obey commands or react happily to those who spend the most time with it.
When youâre not interacting with it, Aibo will wander the rooms of your house in âwatchdogâ mode, scanning for intruders â though it wasnât at all clear what Aibo would do if it found someone it didnât recognize.
Sony Aibo vs Anki Vector
Thereâs also the similarly-priced Misty II robot that has limitless customization and DIY coding potential; the Segway Loomo that can track you for miles outside using facial recognition and littleBitsâ Droid Inventor Kit that teaches kids how to code.
All of these robots either have reasons to use them on a daily basis, or at least provide hours of fun learning and technical challenges as you tinker with their software.
Sony Aibo, by contrast, stands out among the group with its primarily pet-focused approach. You raise it, investing your time and energy to teach it tricks, all in the pursuit of a more lifelike experience.
The tradeoff is that, right out of the box, you canât really do all that much with it yet. Plus, you have to rely on Sony to provide fun updates rather than code the dog yourself. More casual robot owners may be fine with this, of course.
Early verdict
If you want a lifelike animal without any of the stress or mess â and enjoy the idea of owning a robot without any technical knowledge â Aibo is shaping up to be quite the companion. But if the idea of a pricey robo-pooch isnât what youâd consider the best investment, Aibo may not be the perfect pup for your family.
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