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Ugobe, Maker of Pleo, Files For Bankruptcy
AshboryBassPlayer writes "Ugobe has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy — i.e., not reorganization but liquidation. We first discussed the company's Pleo robotic dinosaur toy in 2006. According to the company, 100,000 Pleos were sold in 2008. CEO Caleb Chung is optimistic about the auction value of intellectual property that Ugobe holds. Pleo featured 14 servo joints, a camera, and an SD Card for storage. The final street prices were commonly between $275 and $350, much higher than an earlier hoped-for price point under $200."
I have never seen the words "Pleo" or "Ugobe" until today. I would suggest that nobody else has either - which makes Chapter 7 inevitable.
That, and even if I HAD heard of either, even their hoped-for $200 is way too much for a toy, I'm sorry.
It seems like every other day I see a newly released product introduced at a 20-30% premium above initially announced price. Soliciting interest by being optimistic about cost seems to be the norm, but I wonder if these projects would be more successful if they were honest about expected prices.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
It's the second time they're going extinct!
I'm not saying its not a cool idea, but really, all a kid wants is a dinosaur he can pick up, and then smash against other dinosaurs. Sometimes its possible to be too complex, and too expensive for parents.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Please destroy your Geek card now. You are not worthy.
... who knows? World Dominance perhaps?
They are (were) really neat, really stupidly expensive toys targeted at the wrong demographic. Of course they were going to fail.
If they would have listened to me and put lasers in them
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No, I remember reading about the Pleo robotic dinosaur, last year, I think. There was one review where the reviewers tortured it, and a /. article.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
...would end in extinction.
IIRC, there were at least two demonstrations of it prior to it actually being sold. Both used the EXACT SAME scripted series of actions,and both were claimed to be unscripted reactions to the environment.
Yup.... cuz not hearing about some obscure toy that didn't even last two years makes you unworthy of being a geek.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Pleo. I just hate links that look like they're about a particular subject that keep you going in a circle.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
What the world needs right now is another Heathkit Hero style DIY robot kit, not a $200 "one trick pony" toy.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That was expected; it was predicted in Robotics Business Review last month. The price point was far too high.
WowWee's RoboReptile is almost as advanced, and has a price point around $90.
WowWee is a company to watch. They have a broad line of reasonably good robotic toys at modest price points. They even sell a fembot.
It's obvious that they never did any "kid testing" on their toy. If you give a kid a dinosour toy, he will do the obvious kid thing: Pick it up by the tail and repeatably bash it against his toy truck.
$275 is too much to spend on a hammer, unless it's for government use.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Neat? They were only a step or two more advanced than those "talking dolls" like barney and tickle me elmo.
They most certainly weren't worth the price.
They might have been about as advanced as those robotic vacuum cleaners (except some of those robot vacuum cleaners can at least charge themselves).
349,00 USD is $349.00.
Outside of the US, the comma separates the number and the precision.
While of European parents, I never understood this. The decimal is more important the comma and the placement of the decimal point is more important than making a number readable. So, for me, 1,000,000.00 makes more sense than 1.000.000,00.
That might be, but if so, it was a terrible business plan and as an earlier poster said, Chapter 7 was inevitable.
I actually do remember the release of the Pleo and saw a couple in stores. Everyone looked at it for about 10 seconds, saw the price tag and said "Ouch!", walking away quickly.
Especially in THIS economy, people can't justify hundreds of dollars spent on a gimmicky toy, which is what Pleo amounts to. I'm as big a geek as anybody, but I still look for products that actually do something cool I think I'll use. For example, I just saw a sale today on 1TB SATA drives for about $78 each. I could buy 3 for a RAID 5 array in a computer and still have spent less than a Pleo. I know I can do a lot with the drive space....
I totally agree with the person who said a full-fledged "Hero 1" type robot would be a better product. Make it versatile enough, and schools will pay the higher price to have one in a learning lab, etc.
That's a little harsh for a first-time offense.
I move that he must hand in his Geek card, but can apply for reinstatment at a later date provided that:
1. He has disassembled and reassembled a Cleo without referring to the documentation
2. He can recite the Wrath of Khan, the Princess Bride, and the Holy Grail from memory
3. He provides proof that he has lived in his mother's basement for at least 6 months prior to the date of the application.
Then we can vote on his reinstatement.
Seriously, though... What if he's a theoretical mathematics geek? Then he'd be like, 4 layers away from being required to know about this robot. Did you bother to think of that?!
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I know this is Slashdot, but at least try to write a decent summary. I had to read the article just to be able to tell what the summary was trying to say.
"Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing."
I tried the Femisapien's autonomous mode. It took my wallet, bought all kinds of batteries that it can't even use, then came home and told me that "we" need to buy a bigger house.
I took it back to the store and exchanged it for the Robosapien.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Do you have any idea how many chicks I've lured back to my mom's basement with the line, "Hey baby, wanna see my Pleo?" I assure you, $200 is a small price to pay for a bad-ass chick magnet like this robotic dinosaur!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's true. I was a bit harsh. He might be able to faultlessly recite the entire dialog of every single Star Trek show. Hell, he might even understand String Theory (or pretend to at any rate).
Maybe he should just fold and spindle his card for now. Mutilate it later when he claims to never have watched "Serenity".
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It makes sense if you think of a comma = "and", and numbers being presented as an integer part "and" a fractional part.
Particularly when (as is, I believe, most common) spaces (normal or thin) are used instead of full stops as separators for every three digit group in the whole number portion.
No kidding. Pleo was amazing when it came out. I've got one and it is very cute and quite interesting to people. I'm glad they got to exist for a while. It's a pitty the economy killed them (not that it would have been easy otherwise).
I have my Pleo owner card in my wallet. #120000009280.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I don't think it matters either way. What bothers me is that 'merkins can't fathom the notion that other countries might have different conventions for numbers, dates, or even people's names. Hence their insistence on changing my wife's birthday from April 7 to July 4 when she came to the states, 'cause they couldn't understand that the 7/4/1971 on her passport was not in month/day/year format. Gee, you'd think at least immigration officials would have seen a few foreign documents before, wouldn't you?
Anyway, why not just call it $349 USD and avoid the issue entirely?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's not perfect, but I live here and love it. I'm not part of the CVB, but I welcome any well-run business fed up with their home state to take a look at Boise. It's a great place to live.
"Nothing to see here. Move along."
>They were only a step or two more advanced than those >"talking dolls" like barney and tickle me elmo.
My friend, you are insane. They are/were light years beyond any of that. These guys had a full behavioral and learning model, not a cyclic set of preprogrammed responses to button pushing. To say nothing of a 'bump/turn left/bump/turn left path finding algorithm and a low battery, follow an infra red beacon' pattern.
Yes, it was a first generation implementation, but it is the first and ( so far ) best platform from which to build emergent behavioral complexity.
Example - it is entirely possible to have added a behavior for him to seek his 'nest' ( charger ) - when 'tired' ( low battery ). It fits easily and completely within the learning model - he just didn't last long enough or have the budget behind him to reach that far. More, since it would likely be coded as a basic drive, it can easily interact with the other basic drives and stimuli - ie, the lower the battery, the more it 'wants' to go to the charger.
Add to that a sandbox tool with access to drives, behaviors, moods and animations and you have not only a cool toy, but a great educational tool as well.
As for expensive, he was pricey for a toy, but try pricing the servos and chips that ran him and then tell me how over priced he was for the capability... and unless they changed policies, you could bypass the sandbox and completely replace the ugobe firmware on the microcontrollers, and replace it with your own.
In short, read a little more about him. He was a tremendous technical accomplishment, and a heck of a pet to boot.
Do you have any idea how many chicks I've lured back to my mom's basement
My guess.... zero. ;-)
If the pet dispersed a local concentration of nucleus bonded electrons on the synthetic fiber stranded floor covering, would he learn to make his physical presence approach zero?
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Probably about as many chicks as I've scored by telling them I have the first season of Battlestar Galactica on HD-DVD.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Did I mention that it always wanted to talk about our Relationship?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
There is a nice TED talk about Pleo. Unfortunately the thing comes with proprietary software and you can only customise it using motion profiles and sounds. I am not sure how much this has affected sales, but you can get much more hacker friendly robots from Robosavvy.com. I am still waiting for a walking robot with onboard ARM processor and Linux, actuators with hackable controllers, sensors (resolvers, accelerometer, maybe gyroscope, contact sensors). It doesn't even need to be able to pick up objects. There are several robots listed on Linuxdevices.com (even Pleo although I think Pleo OS is not based on Linux) but they are either not that powerful yet or they are somewhat expensive.
But it is certainly not easy to get your act together and do a proper design including mechanics, electronics, and software.
My guess.... zero
Well yes, that is correct. But that is just because a) I own my own house, and haven't lived in my mom's basement for over 30 years now, and b) my wife has voiced strong objections to my bringing other women home.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Funny thing is that I attended a presentation on robots today, at which this was one of the ones they talked (a little) about. And now they're being canceled. Must be cosmic irony at work, because I'd really want one.
1) Create Robotic Dinosaur
2) Go extinct.
3) ???
4) Profit!
http://www.bistolas.net
When writing in a local currency, language, etc, it is polite to translate everything to local style. That does include dates, and numbers. :) If they're going to mention something in US Dollars, it should be noted accordingly.
I learned to always include a text month in dates, because when dealing with an international crowd, the first 12 days of each month tend to get confusing. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Pleo Ugobe? Didn't he take over the Congo?
Revive the Constitution.
Psht, I'm having to fill out forms for a K-1 Visa for my fiance (basically allowing her to enter the country to marry), and most of the forms assume (through field spacing, formatting, and labels) that her address and telephone number are US-style. These are forms that are, explicitly, for foreigners living in foreign countries. So yeah, I can sympathize.
Of course, there was also the I-134 form which didn't seem to realize that I could be born off of foreign soil, be a US citizen through my parents, and still not have a citizenship certificate number (I had a FS-230 and a DS-1350, none of which have a serial number).
Basically, I'd like to find the people that design these forms and beat them with a sack of potatoes.
Are you sure it isn't a new Linux distro?
I truly miss Heathkit, The mir mention of it causes me melancholy and heartache.
IO-14, I built one during the summer beetween 9th and 10th grade.
I believe there are many in this community that are willing to spend $200 on a toy. If I were to purchase a new video card for ~$200 to play games on my computer, I would consider that a toy. All the current generation gaming consoles are also in that range or above. Some may not consider them toys, but I do.. and so does dictionary.com
A couple days ago these things were on Amazon for $89.
Looks like they decided to jack the price up because of all the publicity.
Any actual evidence that the pleo's AI is really as impressive as you imply? Is the pleo even able to build up a map of its surroundings? At least some robotic vacuum cleaners on the market do (they may not do a good job of it, but they appear to do that mapping ;) ).
Maintaining a model of a simple external world is a very basic level of "Intelligence". Predicting that simple world is the next level. Being able to model and predict other similar creatures (or even "self") shows a higher level of "Intelligence".
So far what it does looks like simple scripting. Maybe not even "Eliza level".
Pleo faces extinction.
I have never seen the words "Pleo" or "Ugobe"
Dude who made the Furbie was aiming for another hit, they ran an article in Wired a few years ago. He also happens to live in Boise, Idaho. Which along with ailing Micron and HP centers constitutes the majority of Idaho's tech industry, lol.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
The worst is yet to come. Being fingerprinted by incompetents, and the "interview" in which you have to prove you actually cohabitate and that your marriage has been consumated to somebody that assumes from the onset that you are lying. Questions like "Where is the trash can in your bathroom located?" One of my friends claims she was asked point blank: "Did you pay this man to marry you?". We didn't have any problems with proving we weren't in a sham marriages at the interview, but that is only because I walked in and said "Hi, I'm so-and-so, this is my wife, and this is my daughter. Here is my daughter's birth certificate, listing both of us as the parents. Any questions?"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.