It has been almost 10 years since Sony decided to reduce its expenses by gutting its robotics research and product development, due to financial constraints in Japan.  The termination of robotics research took two impactful platforms out of the spotlight: the Sony AIBO and most notably the Sony QRIO.

The chances of QRIO becoming a financially successful product at the time were slim.  Although that was true, QRIO impacted society.  With its debut in 2002 the robot transformed the imagination in science-fiction to reality.  One notable quote I remember from my mother at the time was, "that's just a person in a suit dancing."

QRIO had changed the prospective we had on technology in the form of accomplishing the difficult and unreachable.  The Sony QRIO made us realize that we could indeed create a robot that was economical and actually functioned the way we always imagined, smooth and stylish.

The same way the TRON: Legacy movie inspired design and culture change in our society the QRIO did as well in forms of pursuing computer science research and robotics research at a realistic pace.

Lately the robotic industry has taken a sour turn and has strayed away from intriguing research and development.  Research groups and businesses have also privatized all their accomplishments.  When Sony halted all its robotics research it sent a discouraging message to the populous, in the form of, "yes it was too good to be true and we aren't ready yet."  Soon after many of the companies following Sony's vision decided to halt their investment into the future as well.

Being that the robotics revolution is the next wave in technology after the communications/personal computer wave, I believe it is important to remind society of our accomplishments and our capable amplitude.  All the personal, humanoid-like robots now are a gimmick and aren't truly perusing autonomous reasoning and true artificial intelligence.  Some robots nowadays, like SoftBank's Pepper are just an over glorified embarrassment for a Disney animatronic.

This petition isn't asking for Sony to dust off its QRIOs and begin research again.  All this petition is attempting to accomplish is re-spark ingenuity of the creative body responsible for robotics research, as well as introduce the younger generations to robotics at an earlier age.  So by signing this petition we ask Sony to dust off a few robots from storage, charge some batteries, and create a video of the QRIO robots dancing once more.