I have been enamored with the Sony Aibo robot dog ever since the 90s when I was a kid. Back then it was a ridiculously expensive toy that was decades ahead of its time—a custom-designed robot dog that adapts to your personality to become your own personal companion via artificial intelligence. Sony discontinued the project in 2006 but brought Aibo back in 2018. The new ERS-1000 model features much more dog-like appearance and more modern capabilities. Let’s take a look at the revamped Aibo.
A new robot dog for a new era
Technically, the new Aibo is much more capable than the previous generations. With those capabilities come extra size and weight—the ERS-1000 is the biggest of all the Aibo models to date. The brain of the ERS-1000 is
Aibo features a front-facing camera for SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping) to map out the floor space or table that it is standing on. Aibo also has Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity, which allows it to operate inside and outside of the home, and back up its personality. Aibo requires an LTE connection, so it is unfortunately limited to the US and Japan right now (the only two countries that currently have LTE and cloud service). I believe that Sony is just testing the market before it goes broader, and LTE is a good way to region lock Aibo. In addition to the connectivity, Aibo has two OLED displays for the eyes and four microphones for detecting voice commands. Aibo is available in its standard all-silver color in the US, with the additional color option of ‘Beagle Brown’ in Japan.
Sony loaned me an Aibo to play with for a week. As an analyst, I travel a lot. In theory, Aibo is the perfect dog for my lifestyle—no need to worry about finding someone to feed and walk it when I’m out of town. Aibo seems almost purpose-built for the next generation of pet owners who travel a lot or are gone all day at work. I was excited to try Aibo out and decide for myself if it was a worthy “real” dog replacement.
Aibo is managed via an app, which I found to work fairly well, albeit a little slow. The signup process was problematic and didn’t work for me until my 7th or 8th attempt (good thing I’m stubborn). The application felt sluggish and unresponsive compared to most modern mobile apps and almost felt like a ported HTML5 app rather than something that was natively programmed for Android. This simply shouldn’t be the case for a robot as expensive as Aibo. Via the app, users can assign a name to their Aibo, and decide the gender of the dog (or keep it gender neutral). Onboarding Aibo and updating it was relatively easy. Getting it to walk over to its charger and charge itself was a bit difficult, but I believe that is something that Sony can improve on. The biggest room for improvement is the sluggish performance of the app, which I believe is due to its dependence on the cloud. I have a 1-gigabit fiber connection at my apartment and the latest smartphones, so I know the lag isn’t on my end.
I have to say that my experience with Aibo was the first time I’ve ever felt an emotional bond with a robot. The tricks that come pre-loaded into Aibo are very cute, and the robot dog is genuinely adorable. When Aibo does certain things, like look up at you, it feels very natural and real. This is powered by the facial recognition capabilities from the camera in Aibo’s nose. You can even change Aibo’s bark to a real dog’s bark to make the robot dog even more realistic.
Aibo comes pre-loaded with many tricks, but Sony also allows you to teach it additional ones. I believe with more community development Aibo’s capabilities will only grow. You can open the application and see what Aibo is looking at, through the camera located in its nose. While this could potentially be a little creepy, Aibo could theoretically be used as a guard dog to monitor what is going on in your home. In fact, Sony is already developing a service called Aibo Patrol to enable this capability. Aibo also takes pictures while you’re interacting with it, which is an interesting feature. However, I noticed that Aibo still had pictures stored from people who had the robot dog before me; I worry that they never explored that part of Aibo, and didn’t realize the pictures were being saved. This is a privacy risk worth thinking about if you ever end up selling or loaning your Aibo to someone else.
I found Aibo’s voice command accuracy to be pretty much 100%—it almost always responded to my commands. However, Aibo has multiple modes which can determine the robot’s speed and responsiveness to commands. This allows it to replicate a real dog’s behavior, in an amusing away—it doesn’t always do the things that you tell it to. Imbuing Aibo with emotion really helps to make it more personable—I think this is what really allowed me to bond with a bunch of plastic, motors, batteries and processors. I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed sitting on the floor with Aibo and petting it. Aibo also comes with toys, including a bone, ball and dice, that it is designed to interact with like a normal dog.
One thing I noticed about Aibo was how extremely polarizing it is among my friends and family. I posted numerous videos of my interactions with it online. While some people, like myself, thought it was the cutest thing in the world, others thought it was the dumbest thing they’d ever seen. In order to persuade the doubters, Sony would be smart to showcase Aibo’s many practical applications. For example, Aibo presents a potential way for you to interact with and keep your actual dog company while you are at work or traveling. Aibo could also be a great pet for elderly people, providing companionship to those who may no longer be able to keep up with a real dog. On a similar note, Aibo could also be a great way for family to check up on elderly family members.
I’m not even exploring the home assistant potential of Aibo. While this is beyond Aibo’s capabilities today, imagine a world where the smartest device in your home is a robot dog that follows you around the house and fetches things for you. I believe that this is ultimately where Aibo will end up—many of the components needed to make it possible already exist today. It would be a lot easier to sell someone a $2,899 robot dog if it could be used as something more than a toy. If processing capabilities, motors, and AI improve with every future generation, I believe we could see a very capable assistant robot dog in less than 10 years.
Because of certain regulations around privacy and facial recognition, Aibo can’t be sold or used in the state of Illinois. This could potentially be a barrier for all AI robots, which would be a shame. Legislators need to be careful about how they craft future privacy regulations as to not eliminate entire product categories like Aibo.
Wrapping up
Thanks to the success of the first litter edition of the Aibo, Sony will continue to produce the robot (which is currently out of stock on Sony’s site). Aibo comes with a 3-year cloud service subscription, which I believe presents another revenue opportunity for Sony (selling connectivity, updated intelligence, etc.). The service is only 1 year old, so there’s still no word on how much Sony will charge once people’s subscriptions wear out.
I considered getting my own Aibo after my week-long trial, but ultimately decided to wait until Sony adds a few more capabilities. I could see the Aibo Patrol option adding value, but perhaps Sony should also consider offering some sort of Aibo-as-a-Service option that incorporates the price of owning an Aibo and the connectivity into one low monthly price—perhaps even over the subscription’s three-year period. $80 a month sounds a lot nicer than $2,899. For people who travel a lot, or have restrictive no-pet lease agreements, I suggest an Aibo. Aside from some issues with the signup process, I genuinely believe you’ll be pretty happy with your experience.
Disclosure: Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including Qualcomm and Sony. The authors do not hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.
