Man best friend in Japan always had a different meaning. It started when Sony introduced Aibo back in 1999 to the world. Aibo was a cute robot dog, which knew how to perform basic operations such as walking and recognizing voice commands.

Unfortunately, Sony eventually decided to cease Aibo production after 170,000 dogs sold. Although Aibo was considered a huge hit in Japan. Now a group of Japanese scientists want to create a more advanced robot dog.

The dog, “Hon Hon”, was introduced last week at Chiba’s Techno-Frontier 2008 symposium which shows technology projects from around Japan. You can see Hon Hon in action right here:

And if you want, you can always enjoy an Aibo playing with a cat:

And if you are into robotic dinosaurs, you should really take a look at Pleo.

Source (Japanese Translated): [Robot Watch]

For the complete gallery: [Mainichi]