[robocup-legged] Aibo Obit

[David Calkins]

I wrote this for SERVO magazine.

I expect many of you will disagree with some aspects of it, but I thought I'd
post it here for your review.

-David E. Calkins
Director, SFSU Engineering Design Center & Robotics
President, Robotics Society of America / ROBOlympics

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R.I.P. Aibo
Or not.

Let us now, dear mourners, look back on the last five years of the finest
consumer robot produced to date.  Sony has discontinued its Aibo division. 
After producing 150,000 units, the end is now in sight.

But before we plan the wake, let?s be realistic.  I have several Aibos myself,
but Sony didn?t break down my door at 3am and take them away.  They just
stopped making new ones.  They didn?t kill the dog, they simply had it spayed
so it wouldn?t have any puppies.  While I was dismayed when I first heard the
announcement, I have come to agree with it.  Not because I don?t like Aibos,
but because this move will help advance robotics.

When beloved products go away, are they really gone?  You can always try e-bay. 
If a TV show is discontinued, fans might start a letter campaign to the network,
but it?s probably not coming back.  Why not?  Because it?s run its course. 
There are those fans who want time to stop and never go forward.  Why?  Because
of the sheer joie de vie of the moment.  Like a first kiss, a cherry high, or a
new toy (which is what Aibos were), we want to stay in that second in time, to
hold on to the innocence and newness of it.  But roomy new castles are built on
the ruins of small old forts, and continuing to add-on to an extant product
ensures mediocrity, not excellence.

VHS could have been replaced by a similar but improved S-VHS, but instead we
moved on to laserdiscs, which gave way to DVD?s, which are even now giving
way to DVR?s and video-on-demand.  These are technologies we never imagined
20 years ago.  Can?t you believe that there is something better than
foot-long robot dogs in our near future?  Stopping production of the Aibo
ensures one thing:  Something better is coming down the pipe from some garage
inventor or hungry company.  If a need truly exists, someone will find a way to
fill it.

And let us not forget that the Aibo was not without problems.  Three major
faults come immediately to mind.

Proprietary OS.  Oh, they called it open source, but the last time I checked,
Panasonic and AiboPet weren?t allowed to sell or advertise Aibo add-ons. 
Memories of Beta, anyone?  There?s a reason everyone ended up with VHS, and
it wasn?t superior quality.  It was JVC letting the format be open for other
companies to license and build-upon.  Sony never let Aibo go to the park and
mate with other doggies.  Cross-breeding is as good for plastic dogs as it for
furry ones.

Expandability.  Imagine a computer without a hard drive, instead you boot from
your CD.  You want to use PhotoShop?  Boot.  Excel?  You must re-boot.  Want to
run both at once?  Sorry, you?re out of luck.  Aibos should have had a 500 meg
or so on-board hard drive with the OS and personalities stored there.  If I want
to run Navigator, I shouldn?t have to remove all the memory and install a
different set, and then re-boot ? losing my dog?s personality.  I should be
able to just add new tricks to the extant personality.  I can teach my
flesh-and-blood dog to both sit and fetch.  I don?t have to swap her brain
every time I want a new trick.

Marketing.  Few people outside of the robot community really knew of Aibos?
full capabilities.  Its wireless video, internet controllability, emerging
personas, trainability, facial recognition, and many other features were
unknown to the average consumer.  They saw it as a $2000 toy, and most people
rejected it.  If Sony had done a better job of educating people about
everything that Aibos could do, sales would have increased ten-fold.  Consumers
just didn?t know how advanced Aibos really were.

So to some extent, the Aibo was doomed from the get-go.  Like so many of
Sony?s product lines, Aibos were crippled not because they weren?t
brilliant in concept, but because Sony is so foolish about licensing and
marketing.  And Sony has often shown that they are incapable of learning from
their previous mistakes.

As to the Aibos themselves?  They were a brilliant beginning.  A taste of the
future.  A starting point.  But they were mudskippers on the evolutionary tree,
and it?s time to lose the rhetorical gills and develop fingers. The list-serve
for RoboCup soccer teams who reprogram Aibos to play soccer is now abuzz with
pleas to Sony to keep the Aibo.  But instead, I would argue that all of these
brilliant roboticists should move forward!  Should we all still be programming
on 386?s?  Instead of upgrading Windows yet again, why not switch to Linux? 
And if Linux doesn?t exist, write it.

Let?s build a better walking, camera-capable, open-source platform. Just as
jet engines replaced propellers on airplanes, so must some other robot replace
Aibos.  The point isn?t for us to be stuck on modifying a single platform,
but to innovate!  To create! To let this sour grape force us to plant a much
sweeter fruit.

I still have my old 486 laptop with Windows 3.1 ? I turn it on about once a
year to reminisce about what once was and remind myself how much better things
are now.  I rather expect that in just five years, I?ll bring out my dusty
Aibos and marvel at how limited they were compared to my new robots.  There was
robot life before the Aibo, and it will continue after the Aibo.  I?ll forever
love the Aibo, but I see it for what it was ? a sweet, old-fashioned king who
must be replaced by a young, forward-thinking prince.

The Aibo is dead!  Long live the Aibo!