Long before LG, Panasonic, and others got into the robotics business, Sony was not only doing heavy research in the field, but also had a fully functional consumer product: AIBO. Sure, compared to technology today AIBO’s functionality appears basic, but for its time, the fact that AIBO could walk around the house, have minimal interactions/reactions, and even allow for things like logging in via a computer app and see from its perspective were fairly advanced.

Still it’s hard to blame Sony for eventually dropping the venture. Today, we take a lot of the tech at our disposal like vast availability of Wi-Fi, 4G, and computer miniaturization for granted, which no matter how much money Sony poured into AIBO, would not have been available in the early 2000s. To put the rapid pace of computer miniaturization, which is a necessity for robotics into context, the Apple AirPods, which house their custom W1 chip  are actually more powerful than the original iPhone. Now take the leap of computing power and add to it modern and more nimble operating systems with cloud connectivity and we can begin to see a far more advanced AIBO which is clearly what Sony is aiming for.

Here is Sony CEO Kaz Hirai talking about robotics and AI with Engadget:

 When we look at the future of our electronics business at Sony and what is going to be one of the pillars for our future business, we came to the conclusion that it’s a combination of all the robotics technology that we have, combined that with AI, to bring a new customer experience in the home and also in the professional fields like, for example, factory automation. We actually formed a new group in Japan at headquarters to really look into that space and also basically do an inventory of the technology that we have. If we don’t have something, we need to go out and acquire it as well and so we created a fund to do that. They are also charged with coming up with some product ideas; both consumer facing and otherwise. We’ll have more announcements in that space as well. Based on what I’ve seen thus far, it’s really exciting stuff.

That’s what a lot of people are saying. We’ll see. We’ll see. What I want to emphasize though is that it’s not just about recreating an AIBO and that may be in the works and books as well but it’s bigger than that. We firmly believe that it’s not just going to be one product category but a very important pillar for our electronics business going forward. 

Kaz is clearly not being shy about Sony’s robotic ambitions which will surely include AIBO. We’ve already seen parts of their vision with the Xperia Agent (and definitely watch my video preview to get a better feel for it), a far more robotic take on Amazon Echo and Google Home. Could AIBO be our first real walking/talking robotic dog companion that we can converse with about things going on in our life?