Pleo

Ugobe, the innovative Emeryville, Ca. based toy company, has achieved quite a feat with their robotic life-form called Pleo. The oft delayed release of Pleo was worth the wait.

Pleo is designed to resemble a Camarasaurus. The Camarasaurus was a late-Jurassic North American herbivore. They grew to 60 feet in adulthood, but were Pleo's size as a newborn. The rest of Pleo is a product of technology, applied design principles, and psychology.


Technology:

• camera-based vision system (for light detection and navigation)
• two microphones, binaural hearing
• eight touch sensors (head, chin, shoulders, back, feet)
• four foot switches (surface detection)
• fourteen force-feedback sensors, one per joint
• orientation tilt sensor for body position
• infrared mouth sensor for object detection into mouth
• infrared transmit and receive for communication with other Pleos
• Mini-USB port for online downloads
• SD card slot for Pleo add-ons
• infrared detection for external objects
• 32-bit Atmel ARM 7 microprocessor (main processor for Pleo)
• 32-bit NXP ARM 7 sub processor (camera system, audio input dedicated processor)
• four 8-bit processors (low-level motor control)

Design Principles:

Ugobe designs lifelike creatures, capable of displaying organic movement and adaptable behaviors. Ugobe accomplishes this by combining sensory, electro-mechanical articulation, and synthetic neurostimulation to create the lifelike appearance of its robots.

Psychology:

Particular attention was paid to the human neurological responses; those elements are exhibited through interaction between Pleo and the environment. The classic push and pull between nature (programming) and nuture (stimulus) determines Pleo's personality.

The line between them and us was always so definite. I'm less certain these days. That's fine with me, though. Certainty never was all it was cracked up to be anyway.