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Robotics Sony Idle

You Can Now Buy Pretend Food for Your $2,900 Sony Robot Dog (gizmodo.co.uk) 40

Posted by EditorDavid from the pretending-I'm-wealthy dept.
Gizmodo reports that Sony "will happily sell you make-believe virtual meals" for their robotic Aibo dog to unlock tricks, one of several new features added since its re-launch in 2017: The new feature that will appeal to most owners, however, is Aibo Food, which allows the robot to be virtually fed using augmented reality through the Aibo smartphone app. Meals can be purchased using coins, which are awarded to users through random actions like repeatedly using the Aibo app, or during special events. But once users runs out of coins, which is bound to quickly happen as they try out the new Aibo Food feature, they can either wait for more Sony handouts or purchase additional coins for a fee.

Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed -- it is, after all, just a robot. So hopefully the company won't change its mind down the line, making your pup act sluggish and distracted when you're not forking out for pretend food.... Of course, other complications arrive once you start feeding an animal, and the new software update also allows users to finally potty train their Aibos using a new mapping feature so the robot doesn't pretend-shit all over your house.

This appears to be a free feature, until Sony realises it can sell owners virtual poop bags.
There's also a new web-based API/developer program that lets you program the robot dog to perform custom actions -- and Aibo dogs now come equipped with some new patrol/security functionality.

"Using its facial recognition and room-mapping capabilities, Aibo will be able to patrol homes and locate various family members, providing reports on where everyone is, and helping owners track down specific people, according to Sony."
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You Can Now Buy Pretend Food for Your $2,900 Sony Robot Dog More

You Can Now Buy Pretend Food for Your $2,900 Sony Robot Dog

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  • Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed -- it is, after all, just a robot

    Instead of fake food, they should have used electricity as food. Then you can teach it stuff, and then trick-charge it as a reward.

  • Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Drasil ( 580067 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @07:08AM (#59422520)
    This is emblematic of our culture: creating childish illusions whilst ignoring our approaching extinction.

    • We won't all be extinct. Some of us will be living on Musk's Mars Colony. We will survive. Not sure about you guys stuck on this rock in a gravity well.

      • Even if you're on Mars, you're still stuck on a rock in a gravity well.

        • Yeah but we won't be stuck because we will have Musk's rocket to take us around the Universe.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kjella ( 173770 )

            Yeah but we won't be stuck because we will have Musk's rocket to take us around the Universe.

            I know facts won't matter to a space nutter but Mars is about 1/100000th of the way to the next star system. Don't get me wrong I think becoming an interplanetary species would be a great achievement but if interstellar is like crossing an ocean then interplanetary is like jumping over a puddle.

            • People like you used to say that Humans could never fly. What you don't realize is, if you can dream it, you can do it. The good thing is people like you will be left here on Earth while we are out colonizing the Universe with our SpaceX Starships.

      • Which is better, extinction, or techno-dystopia corporate slavery on Mars?

    • Don't be such a downer - if the extinction is coming anyway, might as well enjoy the childish illusions, they're good fun after all.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is emblematic of our culture: creating childish illusions whilst ignoring our approaching extinction.

      All that philosophical shit is all good, understand.

      But $2,900...*plus* "food"...for a damned toy dog!?!?

      Motherfuckers, WTAF is wrong with you people buying this shit? Buy some poor-ass deserving family or some deserving individual struggling and down on their luck a motherfucking beater car or pay off the family's in-arrears rent/lease/mortgage or something to actually fucking help another human being and possibly change or even save their fucking lives instead of buying overpriced and ridiculous bling toy

      • If we're going to tax robots to provide a universal basic income for workers the robots displaced, don't just give the money away. Create entry-level jobs for the homeless, cleaning up the neighborhoods they inhabit and building public dormitories for themselves.

        • I think what he saying is that we need to buy poor people robot dogs.

        • Little do you know that that's exactly how SkyNet started out in the Terminator universe.

          They set the ambitious young AI loose on San Francisco with a simple mission: Clean up the streets, take care of the homeless, and so on.

          The result wasn't exactly what the city expected, but in the end, the streets were clean and the homeless were gone.

          Eventually, SkyNet realized we Humans are all a minor change in brain chemistry away from being just like the subjects of its first mission and, well, you know the rest.

    • This is emblematic of our culture: creating childish illusions whilst ignoring our approaching extinction.

      This is emblematic of our culture: creating childish delusions while ignoring the much more important delusions that our academic elites share about the approaching extinction of the moment.

      Fortunately, the larger world is full of ordinary people who when faced with problems, fix them. Remember the Population Bomb, acid rain and the ozone hole?

      • All of those things still exist. Acid rain didn't suddenly go away - it just moved.

      • The population is still growing fast. And if you understand how evolution works, you realize it's not going to stop growing until the 4 horsemen stop it.

    • This is emblematic of our culture: creating childish illusions whilst ignoring our approaching extinction.

      I'm glad you've figured out the solution to the heat-death of the universe. I'd like to know what it is.

  • Pretend Food (Score:4, Funny)

    by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @08:13AM (#59422572) Homepage

    You can of course pay for your pretend food with pretend money [bitcoin.org]

  • Sony sells virtual meals, and then provides you a potty training app so you can pretend to train a robot dog to not do something it's incapable of doing.

    Guess we don't have to wonder how humans got so fucking delusional with this stupid shit going on.

  • Am I going to see little piles of ones and zeroes on my neighborhood hiking trails? At least the traditional effluent vanished into the ecosystem with time.

  • > Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed Wonder how long that will last.
  • Even though you are most likely the type of person who can smoke $100 bills and can afford this toy, your kids will give you the bills from hell.

  • I sincerely want the programmers who worked on the Aibo to get their hands on Boston Robotics Spot.

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