AIBO robot dog

[A Johnstone <adrian@cs.rhul.ac.uk>]

Dear all,

it's too big to be a micromouse entrant, but you might be interested in
our latest acquisition - an AIBO ERS-220 robotic dog. There is now a
programming environment for the dog which communicates with a host PC in
real time over a wireless LAN.

It's cost us about 2,100 pounds altogether with the software: the dog and
base level software alone is about 1,400 pounds. The ERS-210 dog which is
a bit simpler costs about 200 pounds less.

The dog has been chistened Vincent, because he only has one ear (actually
it is a touch sensor that you can push backwards and forwards). The
engineering is quite interesting: it isn't the most robust looking thing
on earth but a lot of work has clearly gone into programming the walking
and the various gaits that it uses.

We'll give a talk on the dog at next year's MINOS conference and you're al
welcome to come by and play ball with Vincent when you're in the Royal
Holloway area.

                        Adrian

Dr Adrian Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Computer Science Dep,
Royal Holloway, University of London,  Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
Email a.johnstone@rhul.ac.uk Tel:+44(0)1784 443425 Fax:+44(0)1784 439786