PleoBot.com – Pleo The Dinosaur

Well, I must admit that I’ve been rather lazy when it comes to putting up a new poll, but here are the results from this last poll:

When Pleo comes out, will you ..

* Buy right away!: 54% (86)
* Buy after the price comes down: 27% (43)
* Wait till I see if it’s any good: 15% (23)
* Not buy at all: 4% (6)

Total Votes : 158

I put up this poll back in January (Wow! Time flies …), before the Pleo price increase was announced. So, the results are probably skewed by respondents from before and after the increase.

There is also a new poll up. Happy voting!

There’s lots of pictures of Pleo from the Maker Faire in Austin. You can check them out on Flickr.

How about this shot from steevithak?

Don’t forget you can also preorder Pleo from Trossen Robotics or Amazon.com!

For those of you that can’t make it to the Maker Faire in Austin TX this weekend, John Sosoka, Ugobe CTO, will be broadcasting his question/answer session live on the PleoWorld website.

… stop by virtually through our live video stream. John Sosoka, CTO of UGOBE will be answering questions on Saturday, October 20 from 4-4:30pm CDT, and everyone is invited to participate via live video chat.

Looking forward to seeing you, either live or virtually!

Here are some shots I took of Pleo at RoboCup 2007 this summer. I know it’s a bit late, but I’ve been pretty busy.

I briefly spoke with David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America, and now an employee of Ugobe, about Pleo.

According to David, Pleo will have a C-like programming language with which users can write programs that they’ll be able to download to Pleo. Details are still scarce, but it certainly is interesting information.

If you’re going to the Maker Faire in Austin on October 20-21, you’ll have a change to see and play with Pleo, and maybe even Caleb Chung.

But, for those of us that aren’t in Austin:

But even if you can’t make it to Austin in person, on Saturday, October 20 everyone will have the chance to have some quality time with Caleb and Pleo. We will have a streaming video chat set up for anyone who wishes to “stop by.”

More details will be announced on October 12th.

Ugobe has published three more videos in its, “Behind the Scenes” series on Pleo World.

In Episode 3, John Sosoka, CTO, describes some of the people working on various aspects of Pleo. There’s also some good shots of Pleo being assembled. One of the animators shows how Pleo makes decisions and responds to objects.

Episode 4, called, “The Evolution of the Pleo Puzzle” deals with some of the engineering challenges in making Pleo. Caleb calls it, “like playing four-dimensional chess”. You also see quite a few shots of the infamous new removable battery pack. Pleo has 14 motors that control 15 different motions. There’s also some good shots of Pleo’s 8 capacitive touch sensors.

Episode 5 deals with the “LifeOS”, or software of Pleo. Tyler Wilson, Pleo’s software manager, and Caleb Chung discuss the LifeOS and how they plan for it to be an “open architecture” that allows users to make changes and grow Pleo’s capability.

“Open Architecture” is a very loaded term and I’m curious to see how “open” it really is.

Caleb Chung just sent out an email to the UGOBE mailing list announcing that Pleo will, yet again, be delayed. This time it’s due to the addition of the removable battery pack, which has been long requested by those hoping to purchase a Pleo.

While adding the removable battery pack is a very important addition, the added delays are very disappointing. Caleb says, “We are working hard to make sure everyone who has ordered a Pleo will receive one by the holidays.”

The specific reason given is:

In pre-production testing we encountered problems getting Pleo to charge correctly. Implementing design
changes to resolve the charging issue has led to the delay. We’re working hard to make sure everyone who has
ordered a Pleo will receive one by Christmas time.

also …

As we neared production, we encountered some difficulties with Pleos charging consistently. Combined with the
input you have given us about wanting multiple batteries that were easy to remove and charge, we decided that
solving our charging problems and answering the call for an external charger was paramount.

This is indeed sad news. I was very excited about receiving my Pleo in October. Lets hope that UGOBE can weather all of these delays and glitches and deliver a stellar product.

Update: Engadget is also reporting that there will be a 50% drop in initial Pleo production due to the battery problems! This is indeed sad news.

Ugobe has posted another video in their “Behind the Scenes: The Making of Pleo” series. This time, Caleb Chung, gives us a tour of Ugobe labs. In it we get to meet 12 of Ugobe’s employees – from the CTO, to the secretary, to Andrea the object regonition guy.

It looks like a fun workplace – very open and collaborative. I think I saw a few LEGOs in there too.

Video after the jump.

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