Two things that I always contemplate on whether to post this: 1) this can be a phone. 2) almost all of these except Sony ones got joint geometries completely "wrong" to be cutemaxxed toys.
I'm not a Sony employee or anything, but theirs is whole next level even just sitting unpowered, compared to even some of other Japanese bots. Everyone making these cutebots should have one of any of Sony bots to study, even just as a dead kinetic sculpture.
I think this version has a certain charm to it, reminiscent of Wall-E. I think avoiding the uncanny valley is better than trying to cutemax and failing.
All of Sony bots have somewhat abstract aesthetics. It's not about realism at all but about optimizing the looks. There are tons of basic stuffs like concave eyes that Aldebaran Nao had that a lot of art majors and 3D modellers should be able to come up with that lots of these cutebots are missing.
Any specific Sony bots you're recommend looking at and studying?
The one I have is called Xperia Hello!, and the one I had in mind when writing the parent comment was the one called poiq that was rented to select users on a limited basis. Both require different cloud connections that were likewise shut down. The only one in active support is the latest gen aibo, though its replacement of some form has been teased for a while.
Looks like someone RE'd motor commands for the Hello![1], I guess I should try recreating its "signature pose" command at some point...
1: https://github.com/lumingyu0423/Sony-Xperia-Hello-SCU/tree/m...