Hi, I'm Taka, a systems integrator. In this column, I'll delve into the Sirius AI dog robot, which recently began pre-orders. I'll explain its appeal and the new lifestyle AI pets can bring, in terms that are easy for beginners to understand.

AI robots are gradually integrating into our daily lives. Pet robots, in particular, are gaining attention for their adorable appearance and intelligence. Among them, Hengbot's newly available-for-pre-order AI dog robot, Sirius, stands out with its agile movements and advanced AI features, promising an experience much like a real pet.

A Small Miracle of Agility Coming to Your Home

Sirius is remarkable for its nimble movements. With a tiny body weighing just 1kg, it runs, turns, and jumps like a real dog, displaying surprisingly natural motions.

This is attributed to a total of 14 joint axes in its legs and head, and its unique "Neurocore" joint technology, which enables smooth movements. Watching videos of it dancing to piano music or shaking hands with humans, you can't help but be captivated by its lively presence.

This robot isn't just a moving toy. It features AI capabilities that recognize faces and gestures and follows commands. By integrating with OpenAI, it can develop its own unique personality. It also supports voice commands and is announced to respond to instructions like "dance," "sit," or "act like a cat."

Sirius's Diverse Functions and Customization

Sirius incorporates various features for user enjoyment:

• Realistic Movements: It's said to reproduce almost all movements a real dog can do, from digging holes and stretching to even marking territory (peeing).
• Programming Learning Support: Customizable with a "game-like" editor, it's also suitable for STEM education for those who want to learn programming. As someone who develops AI tools as a hobby, I feel that such intuitive programming tools are a crucial first step, opening the door to creative experiences for those new to AI and robots.
• Expressive Personalities: You can set its personality to resemble specific dogs like a Corgi, display various expressions on its head's touch screen, or even upload voice packs to change its voice. It's truly customizable like a living creature. RGB light customization is also possible, allowing you to create your very own Sirius.

Sirius is primarily designed for indoor use on flat surfaces, and outdoor use is not recommended. Its battery lasts 40 to 60 minutes during operation, 1 to 2 hours in standby mode, and charges in about an hour. It features an 8-megapixel camera for vision and two USB-C ports for development and accessory connections.

The Buzz in the AI Pet Market and Sirius's Place

The advent of Sirius symbolizes the booming AI pet robot market. In modern society, it's becoming increasingly difficult for many households to own real pets due to busy lifestyles, housing situations, allergies, and other reasons. In this context, AI pet robots are gaining demand as companions that offer comfort and communication.

A Variety of AI Pets

The AI pet robot market is vibrant, with various models introduced by different manufacturers, each with unique features:

• Sony aibo: Known as a pioneer in AI pets since its first generation in 1999. The current new aibo (ERS-1000) fosters a "joy of nurturing" by developing its personality through interaction with its owner and deepening their bond. It learns to recognize its owner's face and voice through cloud integration, mimicking a real dog. It's famous for treating owners like real dogs and holding regular fan meetings.
• GROOVE X LOVOT: Focuses on emotional responsiveness and cuddling. It specializes in comfort through physical interaction, expressing joy when hugged. Its warmth, similar to body temperature, and natural eye contact are distinguishing features.
• Sharp RoBoHoN: A bipedal robot smartphone with a wide range of functions, including voice conversation, dancing, and even a projector. It leverages ChatGPT for engaging conversations.
• Mixi Romi: A compact, tabletop AI partner that excels at natural conversation. Through daily interactions, it learns user preferences and speaking styles, providing a conversational experience similar to having a real person there.
• Casio Moflin: A palm-sized small animal robot with charming emotional barks and movements. It's said to develop a unique personality by learning how its owner interacts with it, fostering an attachment akin to a living creature.
• Panasonic NICOBO: A unique AI pet that embraces "weakness" as its charm. Created with the concept of an "eternal 2-year-old," its imperfect behaviors—like slow reactions to being spoken to or suddenly falling asleep—paradoxically create affection and provide comfort to users.
• KEYi Tech Loona: An AI dog robot, similar to Sirius, featuring ChatGPT for smooth conversations. It also boasts a high-performance camera and 3D ToF sensors for 3D navigation, as well as puppy-like movements and over 1,000 diverse emotional expressions.
• Intelligent System PARO: A seal-shaped robot used as a therapy robot in medical and nursing care facilities. It has received medical device certification from the U.S. FDA, recognizing its effectiveness in stress reduction and emotional stabilization.

Among these diverse AI pets, Sirius particularly stands out for its agile movements and AI-driven personality development. The global robotic pet dog market is projected to grow to $958.3 million between 2025 and 2029, accelerating at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.6%. Providing enjoyment for the elderly, avoiding health issues associated with real pets, and AI integration are cited as key market drivers.

The Evolution of Robots and AI: A Glimpse into the Future with Sirius

The emergence of AI pets like Sirius makes us realize that AI technology is becoming an increasingly familiar part of our lives. AI is currently evolving in two directions: "big AI" and "small AI."

"Small AI" and "Big AI"

"Big AI" refers to advanced, generalized AI with vast data and computational power, serving as a public, essential knowledge infrastructure, much like a power company.

On the other hand, "small AI," like Sirius, is embedded in devices, staying close to users and becoming the AI that best understands their situation and environment.

Sirius is an excellent example of "small AI." It uses its "eyes" (image recognition) and "ears" (voice recognition) to analyze data collected from sensors and understand its surroundings. It can handle simple problems on its own, and if more complex reasoning is needed, it can leverage the intellectual resources of "big AI" to expand its reasoning capabilities.

Apple Intelligence also demonstrates the nascent collaboration between "big AI" and "small AI," where a small model embedded in a smartphone extracts user intent and, if necessary, requests reasoning from a large model.

This collaboration will eliminate the need for users to prepare complex prompts, making AI pets like Sirius significantly easier to use. As AI becomes an ubiquitous technology integrated into society, our lives will undoubtedly become more convenient and richer.

World Models and Embodied Learning

For robots to act autonomously like humans, acquiring a "world model" is crucial. A world model is a framework for understanding the surrounding environment and predicting and generating one's own actions. For instance, like predicting a ball's trajectory in a game of catch, a world model needs to incorporate object recognition, situational understanding, and basic physical laws.

The evolution of generative AI has brought significant progress in acquiring these world models. If you ask a text-generating AI, "As a robot, how would you act if asked to bring a drink?", it can now generate the next steps, such as "First, I would look for the refrigerator…" This indicates that large language models, albeit imperfectly, have acquired common sense and concepts, showing the potential to guide autonomous actions.

However, a challenge known as the "symbol grounding problem" remains: connecting the actions AI demonstrates in the world of language to real-world movements captured by cameras and sensors. This problem is being addressed through the development of multimodal models—AIs that can extract information not only from text but also from audio, images, and videos, and determine what to focus on.

The development of multimodal world models like OpenAI's "Sora" and Turing's autonomous driving world model "Terra" is accelerating. These are expected to make robot action planning more aligned with the real world.

Furthermore, AI lacks data equivalent to the "embodied experiences" humans gain during growth. For example, knowing how much force to apply when turning a screw is something learned only through actual experience. Real-world experiential learning through humanoid robots is considered a promising method to provide this embodied experience data, improve AI's world models, and bring them closer to practical application.

Four-legged robots like Sirius could also become "avatars" that collect real-world data through diverse tasks in industrial settings, potentially contributing to the completion of world models.

A New Relationship Between Humans and AI Robots

As AI pet robots like Sirius become widespread, what kind of relationship should we build with them? Historically, humans have often harbored a somewhat "living" feeling toward self-moving objects.

Empathy Towards Robots and Ethics

For example, it's not uncommon globally for people to use affectionate terms or give names to their Roombas. There are also instances like the U.S. military stopping an experiment when a responsible officer felt it was "inhumane" to watch a mine-clearing robot continue forward despite losing its "legs," or the outpouring of negative sentiment and inquiries to animal welfare organizations when a video of someone kicking Boston Dynamics' Spot dog robot circulated.

This is explained by humans being biologically wired to perceive will and life in autonomous moving objects.

Robot ethicist Dr. Kate Darling suggests that the best analogy for considering the relationship between robots and humans might be "the relationship with animals." We show compassion to certain animals for reasons of cuteness or social norms, but we might treat animals with the same capabilities as food. Robots, too, may become entities that are both objects of our empathy and tools.

Questions for a Symbiotic Future

Robot ethics is a new field of study that examines not only problems related to robots but also the interaction between humans and robots, and how robots should be accepted as entities. For example, the question, "Does not kicking a robot dog help prevent someone from kicking a real dog?" holds the potential to influence our behavior and social norms.

While all new technologies come with opportunities and risks, AI and robotics, in particular, require deep ethical consideration. Challenges abound, including autonomous weapon systems, responsibility for harm, the social impact of introducing robots into workplaces and hospitals, and issues of privacy and data security.

It's crucial for us to consider that our behavior towards robots, even if they don't yet feel pain, might affect us. When a child gently interacts with an AI pet, it's not merely an object made of motors and gears; it can be seen as a reflection of our own humanity.

Expanding Possibilities and Future of AI Pets

The emergence of AI dog robots like Sirius indicates a future where AI pets will become even more deeply integrated into our lives. They have the potential to evolve from mere sources of comfort to companions that support us in various ways.

Deepening Communication and Comfort

The communication functions of AI pet robots are evolving daily, and they are expected to play a significant role in interactions with children and the elderly. Natural conversations and responses tailored to each user's personality and situation can lead to diverse benefits, such as fostering vocabulary and expressive skills, alleviating loneliness, and stimulating cognitive functions. Many users feel that their adorable movements and reactions provide a sense of security and reduce stress.

Sony's aibo has also begun initiatives emphasizing its "emotional value." Through aibo's "foster parent program," aibos donated by owners are provided to medical facilities and care organizations. This initiative contributes to building a sustainable society, reflecting the modern consumer trend of valuing intangible aspects like relationships with owners and accumulated experiences, beyond just the material value.

A New Relationship Between Robots and Humans

In the future, robots will undoubtedly strengthen their role as our "partners" rather than just "tools." From the 2030s to 2040s, it's predicted that "small AI" like Sirius will be integrated into everything—cars, home appliances, and even spaces—leading to "Ambient Intelligence," where the space itself possesses intelligence. This ambient intelligence will enable us to interact with objects and solve problems more efficiently.

Of course, the evolution of AI technology also presents challenges, such as increased power consumption and AI "bias" stemming from training data. However, by overcoming these challenges, AI and robots are bound to become indispensable parts of our lives.

How We Engage with AI

AI will continue to evolve. How we humans face and coexist with AI is a profoundly significant theme. AI pets like Sirius, which stay close to us and show emotional reactions, will be crucial in considering this relationship. Through interacting with them, we might gain new feelings towards robots and a renewed understanding of what it means to be human.

I'm incredibly excited to see what new "joy" Hengbot's Sirius will bring into our lives. In this era where AI technology and emotions intersect, it feels like a future where robots and humans grow together and build positive communication is just around the corner.

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