Do companion robots like aibo and LOVOT need a monthly subscription to work?
Both robots keep what they remember about your household under a paid service contract. Their makers wrote down very different endings for an owner who stops paying.
On this page3 sections
Teach an aibo robot dog your face, and the lesson is kept in two places: inside the dog, and in a backup on Sony’s servers. That backup comes with a paid plan. So, in Japan, does the learning itself.
On June 26, Sony announced the end of sales for this model, the ERS-1000, in Japan once its stock ran out, eight years after it went on sale there. It keeps selling aibo in the United States, the only other country that has it, for more than $3,000.
For existing owners, three things carry on: technical support, replacement parts, and the cloud plans that store each dog’s memories. If you own one, that last item is the one to listen for.
Sony sells aibo with a service contract attached, and GROOVE X does the same with LOVOT, its companion robot. Each contract holds the backup of what the robot remembers about its household, and each company has put in writing what happens when the payments stop. So what does your robot lose if you stop paying?
What Sony’s plan keeps running
In Japan the aibo Basic Plan is not optional: an owner must subscribe to it to live with aibo. It costs 99,000 yen up front for three years, about $640 at mid-September’s exchange rate, or a little more paid monthly. After that it renews at 33,000 yen a year.
The plan pays for the My aibo app, the dog’s learning and growth, a cloud backup of its data and memories, storage for up to 500 photos, software updates, and the mobile data service for the LTE radio listed on the dog’s specification sheet.
Term
LTE radioThe cellular standard most mobile phones use for data. A device with an LTE radio can connect through a carrier’s mobile network, and that connection needs a paid data service. In Japan, aibo’s data service is part of the Basic Plan.Buyers in the United States get the first three years in the purchase price. Sony’s US page for the AI Cloud Plan calls the service “necessary to take advantage of aibo’s full functionality and learning capabilities,” and lists the renewal at $300 a year.
Cancel, and a lot goes with it. The dog stops learning people, objects and places, and stops picking up the training you give it.
The memories and settings held in the cloud are deleted. The app can no longer reach the dog, software updates stop, and the seasonal behaviors Sony sends out no longer arrive.
If the memories stored on the dog itself are later lost for any reason, they cannot be recovered, and an owner who comes back must start a new three-year plan. Movement is not on the list.
Leaving partway through a term is harder. If you paid for three years up front, you cannot cancel during that term. Pay monthly and you can cancel at any time, but you owe an early termination fee for the months remaining, plus a processing fee.
What happens to LOVOT without its fee
In Japan, LOVOT 3.0 lists at 577,500 yen in its brown finish, about $3,700, and rises to 599,500 yen on October 26. Its software comes only inside a monthly plan, and there are three, starting at 9,900 yen a month.
Each plan pairs the software with LOVOT care, a repair cover that pays one third, two thirds or all of a repair depending on the tier. LOVOT needs the software in order to be active each day, and the software carries its updates and the backup of the robot’s memories and personality.
Stopping is simpler here, and harsher. You can cancel the monthly plan at any time with no early termination fee. Once it is cancelled, LOVOT stops moving, and its memories and backup data are erased.
Owners who need a break can switch to a temporary pause plan, which lowers the monthly charge and keeps the memories and backup. Otherwise the cheapest plan comes to 118,800 yen a year, more than three and a half times what an aibo owner in Japan pays to renew.
Not every companion keeps its mind on a server. Casio built its Moflin to handle its data on the robot. The data it collects “is processed locally on Moflin,” Casio’s Moflin page says, and goes up through the MofLife app “only when you choose to do so.”
The app’s jobs are small ones: naming the robot, showing its emotions and a journal of interactions, adjusting volume, checking the battery and updating software. The page describes no service plan.
Who repairs aibo’s joints
The ERS-1000 moves on 22 axes, 12 of them in its four legs, and runs about two hours on a charge. That is a lot of moving parts to keep healthy, and Sony offers to check them.
In January 2020 Sony began an inspection service called aibo dock. It checks battery wear, the sensors and each joint’s range of motion, then tells you whether a repair is needed and when parts are due. Sony recommended a yearly check for dogs over a year old.
Repairs sit outside the Basic Plan. A separate aibo Care Support plan, 59,400 yen for three years or 22,000 yen for one, takes half off repair labor and parts and off the standard dock inspection, as often as you need it. What a repair costs before the discount is not given.
So a lapsed plan means something different for each robot. Let an aibo’s plan lapse and the dog keeps moving but stops learning, and its memories in the cloud are deleted. Let a LOVOT’s lapse and it stops moving altogether. Moflin, by Casio’s account, has no plan to lapse.
Sony’s June statement said “the aibo business will continue” and that the cloud plans would be maintained, with no date attached. Owners of the original AIBO know how a maker’s exit runs: Sony stopped repairing those models in 2014, eight years after it ended the line.
A Japanese repair company, A-Fun, still keeps those older dogs walking. It fixes twitching necks and legs by replacing the position sensors, motors and gears in the joints, from 33,000 yen in labor plus parts. The ERS-1000 is not on its list. And no mechanic can reach what that dog remembers about your face: it lives on Sony’s servers.
