February 2, 2007
Waiting For Pleo
About this time last year, at Demo 06, the Bay Area robotics company Ugobe was unveiling its first product - Pleo the dinosaur - and promising the cute pet would be available by Christmas for around $200.
Christmas came and went and Pleo made our Tech Grinch list as its launch was pushed back to March and the cost rose to $250.
Now Ugobe has announced Pleo won’t be available until the summer and will cost around $300.
This sounds like the familiar tale of an over-ambitious ground-breaking product that needs lots of bugs working out and has escalating costs.
But there’s also an element of perfectionism about the Ugobe team, who showed us a greatly improved Pleo at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, where the skin and movements had become increasingly realistic.
Ugobe says the delay is due to an extra sensor - that makes 35 in all now - being added under the chin where people have been tending to stroke the robot. They are also upgrading the internal speakers and improving Pleo’s sound library.
Ugobe is meanwhile trying to assuage the impatience of dinosaur robot fans by launching a contest on its website with ten of the first Pleos off the production line as prizes.
