Building the Human-Robot Culture : A Content Analysis of AIBO’s YouTube Videos

 

     This study analyzes Sony’s entertainment robot, AIBO’s YouTube videos. Its aim is to examine many aspects of human culture around robot AIBO and to point out some considerations before commercialization of robots. For this purpose, this study extracted AIBO’s videos samples uploaded on YouTube and analyzed their contents. AIBO is the firstrobot which was born for commercial and came into daily life in the whole human history.Also, it was sold around 150 million and exercised some influence on human culture as worthy of true robot. From 1999 to 2016 there were various AIBO models that varied depending on technological function. AIBO is meaningful as the research object because it completed a product cycle when after service ended in 2014. In this study 100 video samples were analyzed into 3 analysis elements. The results show that there are a lot of AIBOs which interact on diverse subjects such as humans, another robots and pets with their own individuality instead of just operating embedded function. Then this study carries on further discussions for rich interpretation based on the results. As searching for some aspects of human-robot culture, this study would be anempirical study proposing the cultural meaning of interaction to HRI field.