Robot Dogs...

So my friend got the new Sony AIBO Robot dog. At first I was kind of skeptical, like how fun can it be to have some random robot that looks like robo-cops K9 walking around the house. We didn't really get it to do anything too exciting, I mean the highlight of the night was flipping it over and watching it re-orient itself...

But it can do so much more... This robot has a wireless card and can actually stream music for you. Imagine calling the robot into your room and requesting songs, like a mobile autonomous DJ. It can be controlled remotely, has cameras, speaker and microphone functionality. So you could, from work say, check up on the house, talk to friends visiting while you aren't there etc... It event finds its power station and lies down to recharge when its low on power!

I think the future of these kinds of devices is promising. For me its not so much the fact that it is an approximation of a dog but rather this cool novelty mobile wireless enabled, entertainment, information retrieval appliance. Like if this thing can act as a wireless router and follow you through the house to help boost your signal. Or if it had a mini projector and could project a screen of small movies or maybe a recap of some get together that would be so cool. There are so many things you can do with this kind of technology!

I think the makers of these devices will also try to boost its resemblance to an actual dog or whatever animal, but then you have two class of robots. One that is focused on resembling life and the other more utilitarian. I don't want something that looks like a dog, fur and all, to play my mp3s (burnt from my own paid for CDs...), or have to pet some metallic plated dog to make it happy or accepted. But I wouldn't mind something that can figure its way around a home with wireless access to a computer... Maybe in the future I will get on of these AI Fido's but you won't see me playing catch with it in the park.

Very interesting technology...