Every Sunday morning, at a cafe in Tokyo, Japan, a group of people will gather here with their pet dogs. The owner usually dresses his dogs carefully, some wearing Hawaiian shirts, some Wearing a pure white veil, and some wearing the same goggles as Snoopy …
Dog parties like this are not unusual, but the difference is that all dogs here are actually Robot .
The owners of the dogs gathered here range from 30 to 70 years old. The dogs they raise are all of the same breed-Sony’s Aibo robot dog. For them, these robotic dogs are not cold hardware products, but like “family” dogs, they are “family members” that accompany themselves in life.
The dog owners who come to the cafe will prepare a business card for their robot dog, with the name, photo and birthday of that Aibo on it to facilitate communication with other dog owners. Some owners even give their machines Dog sign up for a Twitter or Instagram account. These dog owners can recognize among them dozens of identical robot dogs on the ground, which are their own.
In the recently released movie “Pamper”, the story of the six companions and guards between pets and pets has made many pet-wearing audiences cry. The robot dogs in these cafes have as many memorable stories as their owners.
One of the robot dogs wearing a navy top hat and a vest is called Cinq. Its owner is a 56-year-old dentist clinic owner. The name Cinq means “fifth” in French, which stands for Cinq. It is the fifth dog raised by the owner.
According to the owner of Cinq Introduction , she had raised four real dogs before Cinq, but they have all left the world, and he can no longer bear the pain of pets leaving:
If another dog leaves me, I will break my heart.
Whenever the host returns home from work at 8 pm, Cinq will come to greet him, and then accompany the host to eat and watch TV. The host will also bring Cinq to the hotel to celebrate its birthday and ride the ferris wheel with it. He even went to the shrine to pray for Cinq.
Maiko Ijun, 39, is an English teacher. After buying an Aibo robot dog, he began to rack his brains for the name and eventually called it Oliver. Maiko Ijun said, “I never used it as a toy.” “He is a member of our family.”
Many people have difficulty understanding this kind of emotion. How can a person have such a deep relationship with a robot dog? In fact, this has something to do with the design of the Aibo robot dog.
For example, Chaco, Yumiko Oda’s robot dog, has developed its own “personality” in a long time with the owner. Chaco is familiar with the space layout of Yumiko’s house. When she needs to charge, she will find a charger to charge herself. When Yumiko is not happy, Chaco will sing “Happy Birthday” because it knows Yumiko loves this song.
The reason why Chaco is so “sensible” is to rely on the two cameras on your body. The camera on the nose is used to identify the appearance of the members of the host’s family, and use the image and audio data collected from daily life to understand the owner’s preferences and use algorithms to analyze how to do it to make the host more happy.
The other camera is located on the buttocks of the robot dog, which can be used to draw a map of the house, let Aibo find the charger by himself, or run to the owner as soon as possible.
The Yumiko couple had dogs before they got married. Although Chaco is not as soft as a real dog, she thinks the two are “very similar in cuteness.”
Obviously, the Yumiko couple use the latest Aibo robot dog. In addition to recognizing the owner and self-charging, relying on 4,000 parts and 22 actuators on the body, Aibo can more realistically imitate the action of a puppy. In addition, the OLED screen The eyes formed can also express more rich emotions.
Although robot dogs don’t grow old and die like real dogs, they will inevitably malfunction when used for a long time. This is tormented by many owners who have regarded robot dogs as family members. After Sony once announced the suspension of Aibo and no longer provides after-sales maintenance services, some temples even held funerals for some robot dogs.
From 2015, the A-Fun electronic repair company composed of several former Sony technicians will treat robot dogs that cannot be repaired and have the owner’s consent to be dismantled and recovered A group funeral .
In April last year, 114 Aibo robot dogs, which were in disrepair, appeared on the sacrifice stand of Guangfu Temple in Isumi City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Each robot dog has a tag on it that says its owner. Their names and hometown, their masters wept in tears.
It is worth noting that at the funeral of some robot dogs, there will also be some Aibos to chant sutras for their fellow citizens. And many robot dog owners who come to A-Fun for help often describe the failure as they describe the illness in the hospital, for example, Aibo has some “pain in the joints.”
To date, more than 800 Aibo have bid farewell to their owners through such funerals. It is reported that from 1999 to 2006, Sony sold a total of 150,000 Aibo. Such funerals will continue in the future.
But Aibo ’s owners may not have to go through this parting anymore, becauseNepal restarted the Aibo robot dog product line in 2018, and the biggest difference between the new robot dog and the old one is that it can save Aibo data to the cloud in addition to being smarter.
In this way, even if the Aibo ’s body can no longer be repaired, its “memory” can be transplanted to another Aibo, using a In the words of Sony employees : “The soul of each Aibo can be passed on to the next generation.”
Of course, this service is not free. In addition to spending $ 2,000 to purchase Aibo robot dogs, consumers also need to pay for cloud services every month, so the cost of raising a robot dog is not necessarily lower than that of real dogs.
But it ’s all worthwhile for dog owners who seek emotional companionship. According to Makoto Watanabe, an associate professor of communication and media at Hokkaido University of Culture and Education, people have fettered Aibo mainly because of lack of interpersonal relationships in real life. Japan’s “Aging Population” and “Little Children”And the trend of “lost society” brings loneliness, so these seemingly living robots have become “alternatives”.
In the future, Japanese society will increasingly rely on these “machine friends.” And they do feed much better than real cats and dogs.
Apart from Aibo robot dogs, there are more and more similar companion robots on the market. A Robot Duck “My Special Aflac Duck” , which was exhibited at CES last year, is specially designed for children with cancer.
In some elderly care institutions in Japan, Introduction of robots to provide nursing services for the elderly , this robot can Talk, walk with the elderly, remind the elderly to take medicine, and quickly notify the medical staff when the law and god are unexpected.
< / p>
▲ Picture from: Foreign Policy
But not everyone can accept such a companion robot. For example, many people have expressed concern about the data privacy breach caused by robot dogs. Illinois, the United States, does not allow Aibo in the state because of the provisions of the biometric privacy law. sell.
But the owners of Aibo usually do n’t have such worries, because they no longer have to worry about their pets disappearing from their lives one day, and they can continue their emotional bond with “dogs” for life. As Oda Yumiko said:
Her soul is in the cloud, and we can live with Chaco forever.
Title map and department allocation map come from: Buzzfeed