DEMO 2006 Video of Ugobe Pleo

In our original post on Pleo, Dave Thompson shared this link to the DEMO 2006 video. Thanks!

In a word, it’s all about anthropomorphism. Let us start with the company’s name, which turns out to be pronounced "You Go Be".  No remote required. Then there are the three laws, of which no serious robotics venture should be without. These are the ability to convey emotion, awareness of self and environment, and the ability to evolve and adapt over time. In short, Ugobe's Pleo is positioned as ALife rather than a toy robot.

Pleo is meant to be a family pet and this is reinforced at every point in the video. Pleo is not turned on but woken up. It starts by calibrating its servos, which Caleb Chung suggestively refers to as stretching. The demonstration then turns to Pleo's emotive body language, and wraps up with everyone singing happy birthday.

Does it fly? Perhaps, at least enough to make the kids in my house (ahem, me included) interested in buying one. Caleb Chung once told Wired that "we attribute intelligence to the nonverbal cues that make up 80 percent of our communications -- the physical animation. When a toy mimics these cues, the technology wears a human face." With Pleo, Chung has definitely proven his point.