camarasaurus robotus

[xela]

I only got around to opening this month's Wired over breakfast — and there I discovered Pleo the robot dinosaur.

He's nowhere near as cute motodraconis would have made him, and his reactions to stimulus are comically slow. Nonetheless, he comes across far more like an actual creature than any previous robot I've seen. Overall, very cool.

(Remarkably, none of the video of Pleo I've found is even remotely slick. It's almost as if Ugobe, the company that developed him, forgot to hire marketing. The best of what is out there is unfortunately flash: about halfway down on this page. Google video doesn't seem to have anything, and searching on youtube yields several copies of the same poorly paced five and a half minute demo (including one wrapped in advertising for some wholly unrelated product — WTF?), some silent footage from a PC Magazine story (I suppose they figure their audience has low expectations), and of course a conspiracy theory video purporting to show Pleo is a fake.)

Comments

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Cute, but very experimental... he looks like a very basic prototype, the movements are quite bad.

However, intriguing, as it gives a hint of what might be achieved with a little more work. Keep an eye out for Pleo Mk 2.