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Pleo Review - A Toy Robot Triumph?
SkinnyGuy writes "PCMag has one of the first reviews of the new robotic dinosaur. Is it worth $350? I think this reviewer thinks so. 'What most people will have a hard time understanding is that Ugobe's Pleo is one of the most sophisticated personal home entertainment robotic devices on the market today. It easily outshines robot toys from Wow Wee and Hasbro, though both companies offer robots that cost less than half of what Pleo does. Its nearest competitor, the Wow Wee Robopanda, is a good gift for young children, but it's not nearly as adorable, animated, or intelligent as Pleo. (Yes, it can stand up and crawl, but it doesn't look very good doing it.)'"
Be sure and check out this video review of how the Pleo responds to torture...
http://dvice.com/archives/2007/12/pleo_post.php?p=1&cat=undefined
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
They couldn't have put "the reviewer says 'meh!'" in the summary?
Thinkgeek has had these for sale for awhile (originally pre-order - currently out-of-stock). They have a pretty decent video hosted on their site. IMO, nothing can ever beat my Teddy Ruxpin..... /tears up
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Zeno can't get here soon enough for me. :)
I'm a little much amused by the fact that the robotpanda (what a great name) comes with the following:
No remote controller needed
Realistic actions and interactive personality
Direct touch sensor and sound control
Interactive stories and games
Advanced artificial intelligence and awareness
Recognizes and talks to his own little toy panda (included)
Yes, that's right. It comes with its own little stuffed panda. In the video it hugs it. Christ, is that creepy.
Not terribly impressive. But maybe evolution will take care of that.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I'm all for the advancement of robotics and if that means reaching the general public through consumer devices as a means to an end, then so be it.
However, these "robots" that we keep seeing are entirely pointless and ridiculous. They tend to be at least $300 or $400 and they're nothing more than slightly beefed up versions of the little remote control robot you got under the christmas tree as a little kid that beeped and flashed lights. They do nothing useful, are glitchy and . . . talk about "uncanny valley".
The Pleo seems like something that is briefly amusing, but for $350 I could buy a couple Roombas and they actually perform a useful function other than looking cute.
Are we supposed to be impressed by a goofy looking dino robot, just because it can detect when another pleo is around it and it can sense when someone is petting it versus choking it? How can this even qualify as a "robot"? If you have money to burn and your child is likely to be suckered into the cheap gimmicks that form these types of robots, then I guess go for it. . . . I've seen the pleo in action and if the idea is that you buy one or two of these to substitute for pets, then . . . well - let's just say having a pleo for a pet is like having blow up doll for a girlfriend. Not that I know from personal experience.
there are quite a few similar products out there.
When all is said and done, your kid will have more fun playing with the box than the actual toy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That at least provides some context to evaluate the claim that no one but lunatic fanboys will pay $400 for a Kindle because Amazon might go bankrupt some day.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...it had better give me a happy ending.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's just a pet robot for people who aren't cool enough to build their own.
Seek and ye shall find.
PRICE... lets give an example with something we can all relate to (except for the two girls who read /.) Lego. Even the older Lego is going to set you back $20 USD for a motor. 5 motors in a robot invention =~ $100 USD. For accurate and simplified control, it is likely that some kind of R/C hobby servo, or a derivative at cheaper cost is used. The price of that does not drop sharply over time due to volume purchases. A digital servo would double the costs roughly per motor. The parts to make cute little animal robots are NOT cheap, and I'm only talking about low end parts here. It amuses me at times to think that I have some simplistic robots at home (made of Lego) that if bought piece by piece, would cost on the order of about $450 ~ $500.
If you ask any robotics hobbyist, $350 USD for a completed and programmed robot.. well, that's a good price. I don't see the price point dropping much if you are going to have a really functional robotic toy thingy animal friend.
Warning: Some (well all) robotics hobbyists will value the store bought robotic toy on how useful it is once they get it home and disassemble it to use in their own creations. If it is a veritable horn of plenty of usable sensors and parts... yeah $350 is a great price. You may have to guide their scope on value in the conversation.
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A robot trumph? So, what you're trying to say is...
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: huge success.
I really can't express my satisfaction.
Dogs are 10^8% better.
This one would probably give the whole family nightmares... http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x25zzd_babyrobot-made-in-japan_news
...but can you chase it around with a vacuum cleaner?
While it's cute and kinda cool and all, wake me when they make one that can plug itself into the wall to recharge.
Well, the robotpanda is 150 dollars, which is less than half of the asking price of the pleo. The robopanda, like the rest of the toys from that company are pretty simplistic and fun. I think this design is a better idea than the pleo/aibo idea of a super complex computer driven "pet simulator" that costs a lot more than people are willing to spend on the gimmick.
I'd rather be able to buy a toy robot I can say "read me a bedtime story" than one that has realistic moods and realitic poops. I understand the popularity of the furby, but that was mostly to the toddler to pre-5th grade crowd. Not to mention the price point on the furby was pretty good too.
I think people want something that actually does something. If someone asks me what my pet robot does I cuold say "well he reads me a story if I ask. Or he reads me my email if I ask." Not "he simulates the moods of a biological pet." I think the tomogatchi school of robotics is pretty dead in the consumer world. The pleo is a nice gimmick, but thats all it is. At that price its a market failure from the get-go. I could get a roomba and a robopanda for that price.
What? is that supposed to be funny? More like stupid and sexist. Grow up.
No, silly woman, I was fishing for a "you insensitive clod" comment... you must be new here
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There is RealDoll.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How will they survive for 3 years on $50 ?
(I ask because obviously the first thing they would do with $300 is buy the kids XO laptops.)
liqbase
(sorry...couldn't resist)
so they can have more kids and then in 20 years from now you have 10 families to support, WOOT
It doesn't seem like their development kit (which I can't even find an official reference to on their website) can do much. That makes it useless to people that want to do more than play with it until someone finds a way to crack it to run custom code.
But compared to the cost of owning a real pet, a $350 one time fee isn't bad at all.
We just bought a rabbit, and in the first year of ownership I'm sure we'll spend more than $350. We got out of the pet store for ~$100 with a cage and a starter kit, then spent about another ~$100 on a couple months worth of bedding, food and treats. When you add on the the ~$150 we'll have to spend to neuter the thing, we're already at the price of the Pleo for less than a year of about the easiest-to-care for cuddleable pet you can get.
Even the Pleo won't be quite the same as a rabbit, but the Pleo won't pee under the piano. At least, the Pleo 1.0 won't pee under the piano.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
It's a huge move in the right direction. The Aibo failed on the market place despite its appeal because it was $3500.
The cake is a pie
$350 sent to sub-Saharan Africa would wind up in the hands of a warlord who would then buy another AK-47 with which to kill a family sometime in the next 3 years.
Brett
Last month, I gave $100 each to the local food bank, America's Second Harvest, Heifer Project International (grants livestock to families in 3rd world countries), to name just the charities that deal with hunger issues. All told, I think I laid out $1,800 to charities and alumni organizations.
And I ran the office food drive this year; we brought in 1,230 lbs. of food.
And put $100 worth of toys in the office toy drive bin. I'm running that, too.
And I went in for a couple of those "Buy One, Give One" deals from the One Laptop Per Child folks.
I still have enough money left over to buy a toy robot, if I had a mind too. Or am I obligated to donate that too?
That is the question...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
reported
$350 would sustain a family in sub-Saharan Africa for 3 years...
Not if they chose to blow it all at once on a Pleo.
Well, you could donate it to me. 'Tis the season to support your local intern!
Oh, you'd just blow it on blackjack and hookers. Wait, forget the blackjack...
Brett
There. Mission accomplished.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Until the robot gets marked down because you know it will. Once it's around $100 or so I'll buy it then tear it apart to see what makes it tick, then make my own enhancements. Should be interesting since I'm in the process of taking a cheap little robotic dog and enhancing it with an Arduino doing the heavy lifting.
Send a salami to the boy in the army!
"so they can have more kids and then in 20 years from now you have 10 families to support, WOOT"
It's quaint to see there are still people supporting the caste system. I bet you think monarchies are just SUPER!
My wife didn't want to watch the video. She said that even though the Pleo was incapable of feeling anything, watching the video is "bad for your psyche," and that the people who hit the Pleo were damaging their pscyhes, too. I concur with one of the comments on dVice, that I'm rather in disbelief that the guys who made the video work for the SciFi channel, and yet passed up on an opportunity while choking the Pleo to say, "If this is a consular ship, then where is the ambassador?"
Why do you want to neuter 1 rabbit ? Is there a local risk of rampant feral rabbits impregnating your pet ?
BTW, rabbits don't generally like being "cuddled", so you had better get its front teeth and rear claws removed too.
Some people should only be allowed robots, they don't know enough about real animals.
OTOH, from TFA, "....the robot did in fact calm down and was soon walking slowly around my office and (later) my home and crying out for food or attention." I hope it also comes with an off switch.
Hell, my wifes guppies have probably cost me nearly a grand over the last three years - between two tank upgrades, filter and pump upgrades, not to mention consumables. But they make her happy, so it's money well spent. (Not to mention I can hardly complain given what I spend on my hobbies.)
Just so.
I'm so tired of these animatronic gizmos that are being called "robots".
Roomba is a robot. It does something useful.
A doll that can bleep, bloop or wiggle a bit when it hears a noise or bumps into something is not a robot.
None of this stuff seems much more impressive than the Big Trak ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtrak ) I had as a kid 30 years ago.
I am not impressed.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
We occasionally raise rabbits for food, so I'm somewhat familiar with the economics.
Method of processing duck feet
Well, the new lego robotics kit is around $200-$250.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Go buy one, and build something that has five motors in it..... That price tag is the entry fee, not the cost of a final robotic creation that has five motors in it.
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Now to locate and ident the second girl who reads slashdot...Dude. where's my pleo?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
My girlfriend got one of the Pleo preorders and I have to say I'm quite amused by it. The fact that it has an SD slot so you can load your own programs onto it and a usb cable for firmware updates really appeals to the geek in me. Honestly I'm looking forward to the proposed updates for pleo and to getting to play with its SDK. Sure it's gimmicky but it's alot of robot parts and it's cute to boot. It's also pretty fun to watch the thing walk around and explore.
To the 'is it useful' crowd... well it's an interesting testbed to work on navigation algorithms for robots that could do 'useful' things and it can encourage kids to get involved in both robotics and programming. Have some goddamn imagination and joy in life... not everything has to be economically viable or solve a problem...
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
"Bow before me peasent!" This has been a test of the emergency monarch system... if this were actually a monarchy you would already be wretched.
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
Wake me when this thing can play the violin.
Personally, I think the ttechnical aspects of the Pleo might be almost enough to create an adequate robotic cat. Granted it won't be jumping on random surfaces, but there's little reason one couldn't sleep, sit, stand, bathe, knead surfaces, scratch, stare, swat at stuff, meow and purr. Such a thing would be ideal for pet therapy applications without the drawbacks of shedding, using a litter box or feeding.
There was a previous attempt at this in Japan about a decade ago called "NeCoRo", but it was one of those things that fell into "uncanny valley" territory and kind of resembled a freeze-dried cat with a motorized armature stuffed inside it.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Actually, the GP was spot on. Africa needs political stability and economic development, not handouts from the west. We pat ourselves on the back for saving lives through food and medical aid, yet all we end up doing is increasing the population beyond the environment's sustainable capacity, condemning more people to suffer, fighting over and wasting the same limited resources.
The reason few in power care about a real solution is that a stone-age economy hardly competes for resources with industrialized nations, and a broken society is easy to exploit. It's easy to see how governments and corporations would rather maintain the status quo, keeping oil and labor cheap, than invest in a new competitive market.
What we really need is World Bank reform; it was created after World War II for the exact purpose of nation-building and reconstruction. Unfortunately, it's swayed into the hands of the increasingly exploitative US government as well as large corporations, and has lost a great deal of credibility worldwide. A revived World Bank system, with more focus on its key objectives and less control by individual nations and big business, could do far more to heal Africa and other poor regions than the band-aids of food and medicine.
Anyway, what was the topic of this thread again?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Dude! Congrats on the new bunny! As much as I love robots, and I do, rabbits are much more entertaining to date although Wowwee's Roboquad is really cool.
I don't know what you know about rabbits but there are many misconceptions about them.
First one great fact is that your rabbit can be litter trained! Our rabbit Dasher was trained only to use a litter box when we got him from the shelter.
http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/litter.html
Cedar bedding is bad for your bunny! Fill his litter box with news paper, shredded newspaper mulch and, hay!
Don't keep your rabbit in a tiny wire cage! The wire bottom hurts their feet!
Rabbits like a lot of space! If you make a condo for your bunny he will be so happy!!
http://rabbitcondo.com/
http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/NIC.shtml
Over time you can get the bunny comfortable enough that you can hold them.
Hay is the best thing for your bunny (and they love it!!) you can't feed them too much hay. (Oxbow Timothy Hay is the best!) Everything else needs to be fed in moderation. In fact many foods that you might think are good for bunnies are actually bad for their health.
www.busybunny.com has a lot of special untreated wicker chews that bunnies really love.
Untreated grass mats that can be found at World Market are great to put on the floor of any bunny condo or anywhere a bunny decides he wants to digg (your wifes brand new carpet).
Bunnies can spray pee if you don't get them fixed! Wow. We only witnessed this once with Dash when he was near a female bunny he had a crush on.
Man, I shouldn't surf the Slash when I'm drinking!
Cheers.
"I remember how Sony's AIBO robot dog could actually hunt for its charging station when it was running out of power. On the other hand, it was often too far from the base to make it and ended up temporarily dead on the kitchen floor."
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
Are you planning to breed them? Brings a new twist to an od phrase - "Hey you two, get a roomba!"
... and then they built the supercollider.
until you mentioned it... so i checked to see if there were any videos of the roomba on youtube and found this right away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRRLJ-v0KwM
the whole thing kind of makes me nervous
This is not even funny on a meta level. "Ironic sexism" is still sexism. Seriously, get out of the nineteenth century, and stop dragging everyone else back there with you. I know girls who could kick your ass at linear algebra. And, by the way, until "girls don't belong here" stops being routine behavior in geek circles and women don't have to face a constant uphill battle to participate in geek online culture and, more importantly, to hold tech jobs, I think your sort of comment is far worse than trolling. I don't know about you, but personally I'd love to welcome women into this community. I think it would be 400% better for it.
I believe it can only handle 3 motors, so you'd have to buy another RCX and more motors ($$$). Most people don't build their own Robosapien, just cool stuff like brick sorters, walkers, line followers, sumo bots, etc.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
It's a neat idea, if a bit historically inaccurate, where is the saddle for Jesus?
http://xkcd.com/322/
Having linked to that, I think you're taking this way, way too seriously and I would like to remind you that other people might laugh at things you don't find funny.