There are further additions if you don’t care to program your pooch. You can “potty train” your Aibo using a mapping feature, teach it to be quiet and carry it in an upright position. You can also feed the bot by using virtual coins to buy “aibocrisps,” but you’ll want to be cautious. While you’ll earn coins for free by signing into the My Aibo app, Sony also offers coins for purchase with real-world money. Yes, your robot dog now has microtransactions.

Aibo is still far from a trivial purchase at $2,900. However, the developer tools make it easier to justify if you’re the tinkering sort. You can treat it more as a project than a novelty with a fixed set of features.