The Net is Dead

Marco van Hylckama Vlieg on web technology, design, life and everything

Pleo, an amazing piece of technology

'Are blog comments dead?''What would an evil Pleo be capa…'

meta info

Thursday Nov 15 2007

Remember the little robot pets in 80's sci-fi movies? They're here now! Today I ran into Pleo, a highly advanced and super cute pet robot. The videos look absolutely awesome and I've never seen any toy this advanced. Pleo is packed with CPU's, touch sensors, servo motors, microphones, a camera and much more, resulting in an amazingly life like robot that behaves suspiciously much like a real animal. At some point I'll definitely be getting one.

I already have a 'valid excuse' to burn the hefty price of $350 USD because my fiancee's little girl will surely love it! And Daddy Marco will enjoy hacking it for sure! Fun for the little princess and fun for me! ;) The robot supports software updates and hacks through an SD card slot in it's belly, it's 'LifeOS' operating system is fully open and manufacturer Ugobe promises firmware updates, new behaviour packs and the really exciting part is in the FAQ:

Software customization can be accomplished without a screwdriver. UGOBE will support various toolsets that allow customization, from high-level behavior modification to low-level (nuts and bolts) application authoring. Visit http://pleoworld.com/developers this winter for more information.

P.S: UGOBE, don't hesitate to send me one to review :P

Some more videos:

Tags: robot, robotica, pleo, ugobe, LifeOS.

Affiliate program available

bookmarking

Commentary

Join the discussion! Leave a comment through the comment form below!

At 16 November '07 - 05:39 Max wrote:
Hehe, looks like the guy is having a bit of trouble shifting his attention from Pleo to what he’s saying. Cute. Understandable, too, as it looks a hell of a lot more luvvable than a Aibo. I wonder how long the batteries last and what happens when they run low/out.

I’m also curious about what Pleo-to-PC kinda connectivity we’re gonna see. It can communicate — although bluetooth in addition to the IR (slow) and USB (limited cable lenght) would be nice. Apart from firmware updates and the like, the OS could enable (or limit) all kinds of neat things. Think “Pleo Spy Cam” =] Of course, it all depends on how good it will be at recognizing stuff — will it be able to tell it’s owner/master apart from other people, for example.

Hope they do send you one for review!
At 16 November '07 - 05:46 Marco wrote:
The site says it runs about an hour on a charged battery before it needs recharging. Not sure if you can buy extra battery packs. Would come in handy I suppose. I can see how 14 servo motors and lots of sensors and CPU’s eat quite a lot of power.

The open architecture sounds interesting as hell to me. Just like you I’m really curious how smart this robot can be made by hacking the software.

I actually went ahead and sent them an email about reviewing a Pleo. Fingers crossed
At 16 November '07 - 10:47 Max wrote:
According to their site, extra battery packs will be available. Good thing too, because an hour isn’t exactly “a whole lot”. Yes, it’s clear WHY it only runs for an hour, but if you want it to be a somewhat “viable” iPet for the little princess, I think “more” is “better”.

And I’m crossing my fingers as well!
At 18 November '07 - 13:13 Pam wrote:
Awww planning for the princess kiss
At 11 January '09 - 13:03 Daniel N. Lang wrote:
As I’m writing this my dog’s sitting right beside me, telling me I have to go for a walk with it. I wonder what will happen to children when they only play with gizmos like this always doing what they want them to do. Will they expect the same from their environment and be disappointed if it doesn’t react the same way.
This should not mean the old times are always better. I know hell a lot features that I’d rather not like to find in my dog or in a cat or any other animal. But there are things you learn when interacting with real beings that you won’t learn with one of those cute things
Anyway, I’d love to play with one, too and I guess a Bluetooth connection would be nice – it could communicate with your mobile phone then and see whether you’ve had a lot of stress recently, with your GPS device to see where you’ve come from and more …

Got something to add to this?

Feel free to leave a comment on this site. You can use Textile and Emoticons. Your email address is only used to show a gravatar. Please stay on-topic and use common decency. Spammers will be shot in front of a live studio audience.

If you plan on posting code, use pastebin please and post a URL to the code. The comment processing doesn't deal very well with code. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Human comment spammers: don't bother posting your crap here. Comments are moderated and I won't let any of your shit through.

Trackbacks

If you have an interesting related post on your own site you can leave a trackback. As they say: 'a little AJAX a day keeps the spammers away' which is why you'll have to click below to generate a trackback key. The key will be valid for 15 minutes and can be used only once.

10 awesome Tumblr…
For those looking for the Renaissance theme, a quick Google search resulted in this: www.tumblr.com/theme/179 Ta-da! :)
(ohsuzicue)
Five reasons why …
you misspelled “world” under 1.DULLNESS
(Micah)
Five reasons why …
FB is a lie. People’s lives are not that exciting, glamorous, or enviable. Let me guess, you get up and go to work, and take a couple weeks vacation every year. How is that excit…
(JD)
Five reasons why …
Oh my god I totally agree with you!! I’m a 16 year old and I’ve had a Facebook since a year ago and I just realized that it was a waste of my FUCKING time! Seriously the people that…
(Sabrina Cardenas)
Yup, Yet another …
Hello Marco, This menu is sweet and exactly what i was looking for ! I have one problem : I already have a class “menu”, how is it possible to rename this in your script ? I h…
(Maria)

You can use the form below to contact me about various issues. Make sure you enter a proper email address or I won't be able to reply to you. I will try to answer your email as soon as possible. This is an AJAX mail form. Hope it stops some spam.

Featured Links