A Brief History of Aibo

This year, Sony's robot dog, Aibo, celebrated its 25th birthday. Aibo was an instant success when it first launched in 1999, but Sony engineers working in secret had spent years refining its design as they built this walking entertainment robot from scratch. The first prototype had six legs and two antennae and looked like a bug [upper left]. Even after Sony settled on a canine form factor, turning Aibo into a product that would enchant its users required something different: giving the robot a sense of Zen.