Sony Aibo Hacks Increase Functionality

Dinglenuts writes "Engadget posted a how-to article on increasing your Aibo's functionality using third party hacks. Given the increasing availability of networked home goods, I'm very interested to see what uses the Slashdot community can conceive for a household controlled through voice commands issued to a robot dog."

First of all

[CPNABEND]

Can you make the thing fetch beer? Or is that lack of thumbs going to be a problem?

Aibo DRM?

[Doppler00]

What? Hacks for a Sony product? This can't be allowed! Sony must at once produce a new firmware update for all Aibos to make sure this dog-like robot only performs Sony approved actions. I mean, what would the world be like if a robotic dog did anything other than dance and perform tricks in ant entertaining fasion?

We can't have people going around actually writing their own software on hardware they purchased with their own money.

Laser Pointer Cat Exerciser

[billstewart]

Other than fetching beer, the Aibo's main use seems to be as a cat toy - something to drag a string around the floor fast enough that the cat has to do some actual work to catch it. But cats do like chasing laser pointers, so might as well have the aibo carry the laser pointer around for you.

Now, a robot *gecko* would be useful - "Hey gecko, go dust that ceiling spot! And drag this ethernet cable across the crawlspace for me!"

Re:Overcoming the narrow scope of original designs

[Anonymous Coward]

If that mindset was more widespread it would also leave them open to ridiculous lawsuits from oppurtunist lawyers. If anything happens which is slightly damaging to another party... they'd be at the door. I'm not saying it's right, but Sony and others at least giving the perception of not being accepting of these "hacks" might save their legal ass.

Re:Overcoming the narrow scope of original designs

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Your XBox comment doesn't fit.

Locking down the Xbox is in part to reduce the number of boxes sold to those that won't buy the games. It should be a "duh" moment because the business model MS chose for the console was to lose money on every unit in the hopes of getting it back in royalties per game. People buying these just as a Linux box runs counter to this strategy. If people had to pay the actual manufacture cost for XBox, they might not sell anywhere nearly as many of them.