When Nobuyuki Idei became president of Sony in 1995, he sought to adopt a digital agenda and gave greater prominence to CSL.

[11] Dr. Toshitada Doi is credited as AIBO's original progenitor: in 1994 he had started work on robots at CSL with artificial intelligence expert Masahiro Fujita.

Fujita felt that the robot's behaviors needed to "be sufficiently complex or unexpected so that people keep an interest in watching or taking care of it".

[12] Fujita argued at the time that, while technologies such as voice recognition and vision were not mature enough for critical applications, their limited capabilities could be a novel, interesting and attractive feature for "appropriately designed entertainment robots".

His early monkey-like prototype "MUTANT" included behaviors such as tracking a yellow ball, shaking hands, karate strikes and sleeping, which were later adopted in AIBOs.

Fujita received the IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production for AIBO as "the world's first mass-market consumer robot for entertainment applications".

Two of the first generation AIBOs exported into the US came to New York, NY and one remains in the archives and displays at Artspace Company Y LLC.

[24] In November 2017, Sony Corporation announced that AIBO would return with a new model that would be capable of forming an emotional bond with users.

Differences include the use of PC-Cards for memory (rather than MemoryStick media), the use of two batteries, and the option to use a 2-wheeled "rolling module" in place of legs.

These models are aesthetically identical to the ERS-311 and ERS-312 and feature Bluetooth connection to a handheld viewer (Japan only) which would "translate Aibos thoughts and feelings into text" and enable the handler to play games with them.

It is equipped with an LTE SIM card to support interaction and learning via cloud computing, requiring a persistent Internet connection to function fully.

The humanoid QRIO robot was designed as the successor to AIBO and runs the same base R-CODE and Aperios operating system.

[28] The initial ERS-110 AIBO's hardware includes a 64-bit RISC processor, 16 megabytes of RAM, sensors (touch, camera, range-finder, microphone, acceleration, angular velocity), a speaker, and actuators (legs, neck, mouth, tail).

AIBO's sounds were programmed by Japanese DJ/avant-garde composer Nobukazu Takemura, fusing mechanical and organic concepts.

Aperios OS was intended to be widely deployed, using real-time capabilities to handle multiple audio and visual data streams concurrently.

AIBOware (a trademark of Sony corporation) is the title given to the software the AIBO runs on its pink Memory Stick.

The Life AIBOware allows the robot to be raised from pup to fully grown adult while going through various stages of development as its owner interacts with it.

The Explorer AIBOware allows the owner to interact with a fully mature robot able to understand (though not necessarily willing to obey) 100 voice commands.

AIBO's complete vision system uses the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm to recognise its charging station.

By reverse-engineering AIBO, users developed their own software that operated together with AIBOware such as "DiscoAibo" which made the robotic canine dance to music.

[44][45][46] In the face of complaints by many outraged AIBO owners,[47] Sony backed down and subsequently released a programmer's kit for "non-commercial" use.

R-CodePlus exposes new AIBO functions such as simple face recognition, name registration, and camera adjustment settings.

The project provides an AEP-like application (AiBO+ Client) to connect to the robot under Ubuntu Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android.

For example, Carnegie Mellon offered an AIBO-centred robotics course covering models of perception, cognition, and action for solving problems.

[54] Robotbenchmark[55] also features an online simulation challenge based on an Aibo ERS-7 model called "Visual Tracking".

The International AIBO Convention takes place every year at Sony Robotics Tower in the Shinjuku prefecture of Tokyo, Japan.

In the Futurama episode "Jurassic Bark", Bender is seen with a robotic dog resembling an AIBO named Robo-Puppy.

A pair of robotic dogs based on AIBO appear in Tokyo Jungle, a video game published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

An AIBO ERS-1000 and ERS-111 appears in Kamen Rider Zero-One, from episodes 38, 39 and 45 respectively, as Gai Amatsu's AI dog named Thouser.

Between July 19 and August 2, 2020, owners of fifth generation AIBO will receive a limited-time update that will allow to perform a special dance as seen in the 39th episode.