PC Mag on Sony’s latest version of their Aibo robotic companion, the ERS-7. Sony is finally admitting what all of us knew all along: that the Aibo is a dog.
Company officials said that there was a real effort this time to make the AIBO’s movements more doglike; designers even studied the way dogs move. Developers replaced a relatively un-dog-like sideways head motion of one motor (as with the previous model, there are 20) with a sort of forward-and-down scooping movement, for example. Those who own real dogs will likely recognize the gesture.
The other improvements of the ERS-7 are built-in 802.11b, a 6 percent increase in speed, a slightly higher-resolution onboard digital camera, and an infrared sensor that can detect edges and stop our little robot from falling over the sides of tables or down stairs.
