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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
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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..."
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.
$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
$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.
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.
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?