Pleo the lifelike robot was born in Eagle

Article published Sep 14, 2006
by Ken Dey @ The Idaho Stateman

Pleo the lifelike robot was born in Eagle
New toy from co-inventor of Furby already creating buzz for its charismatic behavior

Idaho, say hello to Pleo — a week-old Camarsaurus dinosaur from the Jurassic era.

If you startle him, he's scared. If you talk softly and pet him, he feels better. Play with him, he's happy. Keep food away from him and he gets cranky. And if you think you can trick him into walking off a tabletop — think again.

At a coffee shop in Eagle, Pleo charmed people at neighboring tables with his impromptu performance. He wagged his tail and walked playfully across the table, stopping when he sensed the edge was near.
Pleo isn't alive, but you wouldn't know it by his charismatic performance. And inventor Caleb Chung is hoping people connect to Pleo like they would a kitten or a puppy when the $250 toy hits the market next spring.

Chung knows a few things about bringing toys to life. Chung has worked at big companies like Mattel and holds more than 20 patents. But Furby, the '90s sensation he invented with a friend, was his biggest accomplishment.
Children and adults embraced the hamster-like Furby, fascinated by the cute toy's life-like behaviors. More than 50 million Furbys — worth $1.2 billion — were sold.

Chung co-founded the company Ugobe — as in "you go and be" — to develop Pleo. The company is based in Emeryville, Calif., but its research and development lab with 10 employees is in Eagle.

Based on early interest from retailers and the buzz created online, Pleo is already shaping up to eclipse Furby.
Pleo's first public appearance was in February in Phoenix at Demo 2006, an annual showcase of new technology for corporate executives, potential investors and industry media.

The company already has raised $2.7 million from investors and will close the deal on another $8 million this month. Chung says the company has $18 million in purchase orders from retailers to carry Pleo. The toy is being marketed at children, pre-teens and adults. Chung feels there's too much competition from video games and other items to target Pleo at teens.
Chung hopes Pleo will take the fascination of Furby a step further and help people embrace the concept of artificial intelligence by showing robots with the most human trait of all: emotion.

"Furby did that with only a little bit of memory and a few sensors," Chung said. "We created a balanced illusion of life so that people accepted the product as a little sort of life form."

Pleo's not on the market yet, but it's already developing fans.
The online video of Pleo's Demo 2006 unveiling has had thousands of hits and spawned dozens of Internet blogs devoted to Pleo. At www.robotsrule.com, one blogger describing himself as a "manly-macho type of guy" offered a challenge to anyone who saw the video.

"I defy you to suppress the involuntary grin that will come over you when you watch Pleo's tail curl up as Caleb strokes its lower back," the blogger said. The blogger also said Pleo will be remembered as the first artificial "life form" that made people believe it was real.
The August Forbes magazine called Pleo one of the "seven amazing robots that will change your life."

Chung and his team of developers have done everything they can to make Pleo as lifelike as possible, starting with modeling Pleo after a real baby dinosaur. The team researched to get skeletal structure and movements correct; designers wanted Pleo to move naturally like a baby dinosaur, not a robot.

Dozens of motors and sensors control Pleo's movements and responses to the environment. Sensors detect touch, light, sounds and motions. The sensors feed processors that determine Pleo's responses to stimulation. Stroking Pleo's head soothes him; yelling can scare him.
John Sosoka, Ugobe's chief technology officer in Eagle, said the company is building Pleo with accessible software. The "open source platform" will let owners individually program Pleo by downloading new behaviors from the company's Web site or write their own programs.

The company hopes this feature will set it apart from other robotic products, where behaviors are set.
"If the computer controls the interaction and the device can't really respond differently to different inputs it doesn't feel right," Sosoka said. "It's not that interesting. You figure it out and then you're done."

Neena Buck, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, an industry market research firm, said similar robotic products on the market, such as Robosapien and the Roboraptor, don't appear to have Pleo's emotional connection. Pleo is more a pet than a robot, she said.

"The design philosophy is unique," she said. "They spent a lot of time on the emotional interface so someone believes that it's alive to create a relationship between the pet and consumer."
Whether that realism will pay off in sales remains to be seen. But Chung and Sosoka see Pleo as the perfect introduction to the artificial intelligence that they say will be a big part of the future.

"As with Furby, consumers will drive the usage," Chung said. "But if at the end of the day if we've created nothing more than a new platform for learning and creativity, then we die happy."