Aibo Robots In Japan Get Their Own ‘Funeral’

Sony’s Aibo robots are probably one of the more iconic robots around, especially since they were introduced back in the day when consumer robots weren’t as common or readily available. However just like with real dogs, Aibo dogs don’t “live” forever and over in Japan, it seems that Aibo robots that are “dead” are being given their own funerals.

These funerals are pretty elaborate because they are done in the traditional way, which is that there is incense smoke and a priest who chants a sutra which is usually reserved for deceased humans to help pray for a peaceful transition into the afterworld. In this particular funeral, each Aibo robot comes with a tag to show where they came from and to which family they belonged to.

This is actually something that has been going on for the past few years, where electronics repair company A-Fun Co. has been sending Aibos to the temple to be sent off. Speaking to Japan Times, Nobuyuki Norimatsu who heads A-Fun was quoted as saying, “We’d like to return the souls to the owners and make the robot a machine to utilize their parts. We don’t take parts before we hold a funeral for them.”

Sony has actually revived the Aibo in recent times where they look more “friendly” and dog-like. They were available for pre-order in Japan last year where it also required users to purchase a subscription plan.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Aibo, Japan, Sony