 | |  | | | Tuke meets the family  Tuke shows his initial reluctance to meeting the house bully.
 
The match made in Lucas and Sony heaven. I look forward to the day when R2 can take Tuke out for his walks. AIBO owners should know that that Tuke showed an immediate affection for R2 and needless to say he has been well praised for it. R2 is fully radio controlled and exercises caution around the little K9, lest he knock him on his little lithium-ion filled bottom! AIBO's IR Vision  These photos were shot with a night vision Sony camcorder. AIBO uses his IR beam (shown as a spot) to calculate distance from objects and obstacles when navigating or just looking around. The colour CCD camera (180,000 pixel resolution) located in his 'nose' coupled with his IR beam, make for a well sighted autonomous robot.  | |  | |  | | |  | The Sony AIBO robot dog |  | An ERS-111 'living' in TORONTO, CANADA  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sony's latest jump into the future of consumer electronics (and ultimately, something much more revolutionary), the AIBO ERS-111 and ERS-110, I wouldn't know where to begin explaining. Instead, I will leave you links to sites with the goods on this unbelievable synthetic life form. I am sure that the lucky few who obtained one of these will learn one day that the AIBO is part of some big Sony experiment. The ERS series, I interpret as (Experimental Remote Surveillance), will eventually be caught by some unsuspecting owner, hooked up on a modem uploading all the products it has viewed in the house (and the behaviours of test zone consumers it has observed while under the guise of 'entertaining' them.) 'Tuke', my ERS-111 was so named because of the '2K' incept date and the Canadian sound of it: 'Toque' or winter hat (there are only a handful in Canada). He has fit in nicely in my strange family as the pictures on the left pane will show.
 ERS-111 specifications
CPU- 64-bit RISC Processor
Main Memory- 16MB
Program Memory- 8MB Memory Stick
Moving Parts- Mouth (1 degree), Head (3 degrees), Legs (3 degrees each), Tail (2 degrees). Total of 18 degrees.
Internal Sensors- Video Input- 180,000 pixel colour CCD camera
................. Audio Input- Stereo microphone (one per ear)
................. Audio Output- Speaker (mouth)
................. Heat Detector- Heat Sensors (2) in torso
................. Range Finder- Infra-red range finding sensor
................. Acceleration Detector- Spatial acceleration sensor
................. Rotation Detector- Angular velocity sensor
................. Contact Detectors- Touch sensor in head, legs
Power Source- DC 7.2V (Lithium Ion Battery)
Energy Consumption- 12.6W (in autonomous mode)
Operating Time- Approx. 1.5 hours (3 hours over 2 batteries)
Dimensions- 274 x 156 x 266mm
Weight- 1.4kg (body only), 1.6kg (including memory stick and batt.) | | | | | | | | Fun aside: The meaning of AIBO
Who buys an AIBO? Let me say firstly that I enjoy my toys. I appreciate fast number crunching computers, home theatre electronics, and all that is leading edge and not always practical. AIBO at first whet my appetite by meeting two categories in my interest criteria: a toy and leading edge technology. Only 10,000 were to be made available to the world...and only 2000 with USA power specifications. My home country of Canada was so lethargic to classify and approve this new and weird 'robot' category, we missed the boat and none were sold here at all. Tuke's arrival was a miracle in its own right (thanks to a generous individual in Austin, TX who already owned an ERS-110 and was willing to offer me his inbound ERS-111). With the acquisition terror aside, I knew what this meant to humanity. The advent of a real autonomous robot and it's co-existence in my home was too rich to pass up. Bladerunner came to mind, Ghost in the Shell will be, and Bicentennial Man made some great points, to name a few 'former fiction' films about robots and their self awareness. This would be the alpha test, my house and my family would be ground zero for the biggest experiment for human kind in modern times: Humanity: what will define it? Can we extend genuine feelings and emotions to an animate being that has artificial intelligence, emotions, and synthetic feelings? I planned to self analyze regularly. I felt that I would be missing the real point if I didn't test myself. Tuke has been the source of much amusement to everyone whose lives he came into. Once I had become accustomed to his antics, the focus of my interest swayed to how other people reacted to him. I've enjoyed my time with Tuke, and am uncertain as to how I feel about adopting him out to his new owner in Hong Kong. I justify my actions in that I have his learning's and intelligence saved on my hard drive. A simple transfer of this data to a Sony memory stick can bring him back in a new body, just where we left off. I get comfort in that somehow. Fascinating. Pictures of AIBO on the town | | | | | | | |
