Although Sony destroyed its Aibo robotic dogs earlier this year, the company's Computer Science Laboratory in Paris kept hold of a number of the automatons for electronic animal testing purposes.

Sony's Embedded and Communicating Agents (ECAgents) project is sponsored by the Future and Emerging Technologies programme of the European Community.

It aims to develop a new generation of embodied agents that can interact directly with the physical world without human intervention, and communicate with each other and with other agents, including humans.

The Aibo robo-dog "volunteers" will be able to communicate with one another using a very simple initial skill-set.

They will also be able to build a common knowledge base on the objects in their environment, giving them a sort of "pack mentality".

The project will develop concepts, tools and models for analysing collections of both natural and artificial agents, and aims to generate algorithms, definitions of dynamical systems and performance analysis tools.

"ECAgents will investigate basic properties of different communication systems, from simple communication systems in animals to human language and technology-supported human communication," said an ECAgents statement.

"This will clarify the nature of existing communications systems and provide ideas for designing new technologies based on collections of embodied and communicating devices."

It is hoped that the results of the project will trigger breakthroughs in future and emergent technologies, from self-developing robots to the semantic web and ubiquitous wireless devices.

However, the researchers offer no opinion on the possible results of giving Aibo the tools to "discover" that Sony killed of its product line.