December 17, 2007 4:00 AM PST
The evolution of a dino-bot
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reporter's notebook While the Christmas animation is the first of its kind, it's clear that Ugobe plans to release themed animations from time to time as a way of keeping the audience engaged. And that seems smart, especially along with letting owners post their own custom-designed animations on the community site.
To be sure, Ugobe is keeping some form of control over the animation design process since no one at the company is eager to see Pleo porn on YouTube. How the company will keep that from happening is not entirely clear. Either way, what is clear is that Ugobe is committed to letting people hack Pleo--particularly because if one thing is evident these days, it's that users are going to hack your product. So why not embrace that activity rather than deny it?
In addition, while Ugobe will almost certainly develop other animal robots in the future, it is still hard at work on Pleo, despite the dinosaur finally hitting the market.
That has a lot to do with what the company wasn't able to get in the shipping version of Pleo, Sosoka said, and what it would still like to see down the road.
"This is 1.0," Sosoka said. "There are a lot of things we were working on that were working pretty well, but weren't quite there. So, in future downloads, (different Ugobe employees) each have different features we'd really like to include."
And while Ugobe will release its own development kit for Pleo, it is also going to invite members of the robotics community who have worked on their own tools to make them available. So, for example, people who built tools for adding new behaviors to robots like Sony's Aibo will be able to apply those tools to Pleo down the road.
Before I left the lab, I asked Sosoka why Ugobe had settled on the rubbery skin it used for Pleo, particularly because it is not necessarily the most charming material that could have been used.
"I think that's one of the hardest things" that had to be solved in developing Pleo, Sosoka said.
He explained that the skin had to be strong enough to hold up to endless physical and hands-on play, flexible enough that it doesn't impede the animation and, finally, able to be able to take the special Pleo paint.
He also reminded me that at the Maker Faire in Austin in October, Ugobe had shown off a Pleo covered in a white fur.
And that may indeed be where Pleo is headed. It's too early to tell, and Sosoka wasn't making any promises. But he hinted that Pleo may well have a future that includes other kinds of skin.
"I think we'll probably see a lot of skin treatments" for Pleo, he said.
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Pleo is as much fun as the article indicates. It's just frustrating to only have an hour at a time to play.