There could be 15,000 Sony AIBO robotic dogs out there, but with Sony under the gun, these dogs are no safer than the vaulted works of Bill Monroe or Billie Holiday. With price tags ranging from $1,700 to $2,000, dogs have attracted a cult, but not created a market. Speculation intensified that the Tokyo-based behemoth may pull the plug on AIBO's future or scale back robotics research and development.
Too expensive to be a toy, it is too unqualified to be a soldier. It’s in a rut says Application Development Trends {CASE TRENDS} founder Dan Kara.
"The AIBO is kind of stuck," said Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends, a consulting firm in Northborough, Mass. and the sponsor of RoboNexus. "It can't really be a commodity consumer product because it's too expensive. They aren't robust enough for the military. It's more of a research tool."
Dan knows whereof he speaks. But it seems like the time to call in Issac Assimov. Maybe Ray Kurzweil could help us there.
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