User:Accountmetric/sandbox

History
AIBO grew out of Sony's Computer Science Laboratory (CSL), an innovation center modeled after Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). CSL's first product was the Aperios operating system, later to form the base software some AIBO models used.

Dr. Toshitada Doi is credited as AIBO’s original progenitor. In 1994, Doi was working as a head of a Sony product development lab and enlisted artificial intelligence expert Masahiro Fujita to work on a robot with sensors. Fujita's early monkey-like prototype "MUTANT" included behaviors that would become part of AIBO's including tracking a yellow ball, shaking hands, karate strikes and sleeping. In 1997, Doi received backing from SONY President Nobuyuki Idei to form Sony’s Digital Creatures Lab.

In May 1999, the Digital Creatures Lab officially introduced the AIBO.

In 2007, Fujita received the IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production for his work developing AIBO.

The AIBO responded to over 100 voice commands and talked in a tonal language. Two of the first generation AIBOs exported into the USA came to New York, NY and one remains in the archives and display at Artspace Company Y LLC.

A friend of Doi's, the artist Hajime Sorayama, was enlisted to create the initial designs for the AIBO's body. Those designs are now part of the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution. The first generation AIBO design won Japan's prestigious "Good Design Award, Grand Prize" and a special Intelligent Design award in the 2000 German Red Dot awards.

Later models of AIBOs were designed jointly with prestigious Japanese designers, and continued to gain design awards. The ERS-210 design was inspired by lion cubs. The bodies of the "ERS-3x" series (Latte and Macaron, the round-headed AIBOs released in 2001) were designed by visual artist Katsura Moshino winning the "Good Design Award" The sleek and futuristic, space-exploration inspired body of the "ERS-220" was designed by Shoji Kawamori. winning the "Good Design Award" and a "Design for Asia" award. The ERS-7 Also won a "Good Design Award".

Almost ten years later, Idei's successor, Howard Stringer closed down AIBO and other robotic projects. Doi then staged a mock funeral, attended by more than 100 colleagues from Sony. At the funeral, Doi said that the Aibo was a symbol of a risk-taking spirit at Sony that was now dead.

In November 2017, Sony Corporation announced that AIBO would return with a new model that would be capable of forming an emotional bond with users.