Robotic dinosaur wows crowd at Demo '06

Take everything you've ever thought about the term "robotic dinosaur" and throw it out the window. Pleo has arrived.

Click to see: Pleo, the robotic dinosaur

Making its debut at last week's Demo '06 show in Phoenix, Pleo is a robotic dinosaur, for sure, but it's much more than that. Combine the best features of the Furby, the Cabbage Patch doll, the computer game The Sims and even Sony's robot dog Aibo (recently discontinued), and you start to get a picture of how Pleo and its parent company, Ugobe, will revolutionize how we think of robotics

Unlike other robot toys, Pleo has a skin that makes it look more like a stuffed animal (with a rubbery skin) than a hard plastic robot. With almost 40 sensors (including infrared and stereophonic sound), Pleo has motion that is more fluid and lifelike than you'd expect from a robot. There's no remote control - you touch Pleo, and it reacts (it can be happy, sad, playful, shy and so on.). Pleo is designed to look like a 1-week-old Camarasaurus sauropod (long-necked dinosaur), though most people won't be rushing to the reference books to double-check. They'll look at it and go "Awwww," because it's so darned cute.

And that's the point. Unlike other robots on the market, Pleo is meant to draw an emotional response. It's not surprising that one of the inventors of Pleo also created the Furby in 1998, which caused a stir for its ability to react to it environment.

Part toy, part tech-guy dream gadget, the $199 Pleo (Ugobe expects to ship it in time for Christmas) has 14 servo joints with force feedback; 38 touch, sound, light and tilt sensors (including nine around the mouth, chest, head, shoulders, back and feet); fluid quadruped motion and the ability to avoid obstacles and not walk off the edge of a table. Pleo also can learn while it walks. For example, a Pleo walking on a carpet will learn to take higher steps than one walking on a hard surface; the designers of Pleo give the robot the ability to adapt and change based on the environment.

Features include stereo sound sensors and music beat detection, as well as the ability to cough, blink, chomp, twitch, sigh and growl its stomach, just to name a few. A rechargeable battery and Secure Digital card memory expansion round out the technical features.