Sony's improved Aibo warms hearts at CES 2018

Sony has revived its robotic dog, Aibo, and is letting it greet attendees at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Just like when it was first released nearly two decades ago, the robotic pet is once again warming hearts thanks to its improved lifelike movements and AI for human interaction.

What’s new with Aibo? Reports say Sony put customized actuators so it can now support up to 22 axes. That means more movements for Aibo’s ears, tail, paws and mouth. The robotic dog can do new tricks when controlled by its app. There are also more sensors making Aibo more interactive than before. The dog can move to respond to touch, emotions in the form of facial expressions, and voice commands of the owner. The upgraded Aibo has emotion-conveying eyes made possible through advanced OLED technology.

A few months ago, Sony released Xperia Hello, a home speaker robot that also has animated eyes and the capability to mimic and respond more accurately to human expressions. Adding these features to Aibo and Hello, it appears that the company is seeing a big potential in “emotional ties” robots can now create and AI that enables more realistic reactions from robots.

Market analysts also see that promising. Research and Markets, for example, is predicting that the global interactive robots market will grow by a whopping CAGR of 74.69 percent through the next three years. According to its report, units that respond accordingly to language, and emotional and social interaction are gaining traction.

While many makers are still engrossed with AI for speech recognition due to the success of many voice-enabled robots and devices, Sony’s release of the emotion-detecting lifelike dog Aibo and human expression-mimicking Hello is already an early sneak peek for importers and end-consumers of what’s next for AI and robotics. Prepare for more robots of the future that act not just on what they hear and see, but also on what the owner feels.