[grogen]

I did a short stint in Sony's robotics lab working on the humanoid Qrio (the successor to Aibo) at that time. From what I understand, Sony started getting poor financial results around that time. The Aibo and Qrio were viewed largely as R&D (Aibo was not a major product and Qrio was still years out) and as such, were on the chopping block for cost savings when times got tight.