Ugobe Unveils Pleo, Another Robot Dino

As a followup to our previous story about Ugobe, it appears that they've just announced what their breakthrough product is - Pleo the robotic dinosaur. The official press release says,

Pleo is modeled after a 1-week-old Camarasaurus sauropod, or long neck dinosaur, and incorporates basic traits of autonomous life. Pleo has been specifically engineered to mimic life with organic movement and behaviors that allow him to relate to humanity on a personal level.

Here's also a story from PC Magazine about Pleo and Ugobe. For about $200 USD Pleo will supposedly have life-like motion accomplished via 14 motors and over 40 sensors. Pleo is also, " designed to create a roughly three-year relationship with the end users, where the robot will evolve overtime."

His sensors will include, IR communication and obstacle detection, light sensors, stereo hearing, foot and toe touch sensors, tilt sensor, and several body touch sensors.

The robot will have "organic movement" that attempts to replicate the way living organisms move and respond to changes in the outside world and within themselves. So, for example, a "tired" Pleo will move more slowly, while an awake one will move with a noticeable amount of energy.

Pleo is also claimed to be "self-aware" and able to communicate emotions through sound and movement. He's also able to cough, sneeze, blink, chomp, twitch, sigh, and yawn. Many of these actions we have already seen before with the Furby, which one of Pleo's chief designers, created. Pleo also has a SD card slot and recharable batteries.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Ugobe won't be earning much off of these units. Perhaps it's more of a PR move to get the market interested in their offerings, especially since they're competing against the robot toy heavy-weight WowWee.

Regardless, it's very cute and I'll probably end up buying one.

[Via NXT Bot]

Tags: [ Robots | Ugobe | WowWee | Toys | Pleo ]

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Ugobe Unveils Pleo, Another Robot Dino

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