Robot Body Modifications
Robot Dog gets its ear pierced
The
good news is that Pitchou my robot dog is still alive, and that he
seems to have recuperated from a recent ear surgery, after his left ear
was ripped out. He's now sporting a nifty set of piercings, courtesy of
Natasha's jewelry-making skills. He's now one of the hippest robot dog
around even at his ripe old age of 90 robot dog years.
Pitchou
was born in November 1999 along with his other 3499 North-American
ERS-111 siblings, but Sony has since developed another two generation
of robots with the ERS-200 series in 2001 and the current ERS-7M series
which came out in 2004. With each generation approximatly 2 human years
apart, this would make a robot dog year worth about 15 human years.
It turns out that Pitchou was suffering from some sort of digital
alzheimer disease, or more accuratelly memory effect in the batteries.
I cycled and re-charged its batteries and he seems back to its old
self. While new generations of aibo's can finally recharge themselves
and even update their own blog, old grandpa here seems to be content with running around looking for his pink ball.



















Pitchou lost his other ear!!! It's definitely age, because only a few weeks after I had to perform emergency surgery on him, the other ear fell out. Now he has rings holding both of its ears in place, and I gave him a pierced eyebrow as well. It's possible that the rubber which gives the ears their articulated feel will continue to fail, slowly transforming Pitchou into the poster robot dog for the counter-culture.