Adieu to ‘dearly departed’ robot dogs

The robot dogs lined up in their dozens on Thursday in Japan were no tech fair display. They were the dearly departed being honoured with their own traditional “funeral.”

In some respects, it was a funeral like any other in Japan, with incense smoke wafting as a priest chanted a sutra, praying for the peaceful transition of the souls of the departed.eparted.

But the departed were 11414 of Sony’s old generations of AIBO robot dogs, each wearing a tag to show where they came from and to which family they belonged. Electronics repairir company A FUN, which specialiseses in fixing vintage products, has sentnt off some 800 AIBOS this way in recentecent years at a centuries-old Buddhistst temple.

With the AIBO no longerr in produc-production, owners of old or “dead”ad” robod-robodogs often send them to thee company, the only way it can obtainin genuine parts to use in repairs. Thehe defunct dogs serve as the equivalentnt of organ donors for defective robots,s, but before they are put to use, the companympany hon-honours them with a traditionalnal send-off.

Bungen Oi, the priest at the 450-year-yearold Kofukuji temple in Issumi,umi, east of Tokyo, dismisses the idea that holding memorials for machinesachines is absurd.

“All things have a biitt of soul,” he said after thee service.