A recent episode of The New York Times series Robitica–titled “The Family Dog”–profiles the life and inevitable death of AIBO, a robotic dog no longer produced by Sony. Now that Sony finally closed the last of its AIBO repair centers in March 2014, it is only a matter of time before there are no more parts to repair the critters.
They didn’t shed, chew the sofa or bite the postman, but for thousands of people Sony’s Aibo robotic dog was the closest thing to a real canine companion. So when the Japanese company stopped servicing the robots last year, eight years after it ended production, owners faced a wrenching prospect: that their aging “pets” would break down for good.