After three years of gestation, the Pleo robot came out of its shell. First the USA and Great Britain where it took its first steps and soon in other regions also in the coming weeks. Fully motorized, this robot supposed to reproduce the appearance of a dinosaur-old camarasaurus a week on board a multitude of sensors allowing it to interact with their environment. The admission of its creators, Pleo is not intended to serve: equipped with an operating system evolves, it is supposed to embody a creature of company "virtually alive." Meeting with this strange specimen of the family ... domestic robots of the Jurassic era?
"Our goal was really to try to give a soul to the machine," explains, with emphasis, Nat Southworth, in charge of marketing at Ugobe, the company that produces Pleo. "The operating system that drives Pleo also called" Life OS ", a name that reflects our desire to change the relationship between humans today the world of robotics."
How to reproduce life? Rather than instilling a Pleo the ability to conduct technical prowess, its designers have chosen to focus on affect. With sensors, Pleo reacts to fondling, it takes an air contrite when student voice, and expresses his joy if he scratches his head. Finally, Pleo is changing: one hour after its first road east and treated in a phase of "birth", where he discovered his environment.
Led by two main microprocessors, assisted by four auxiliary processors, Pleo loads fourteen engines, eight touch sensors, fourteen detectors reaction to the force responsible for governing the functioning of its joints, a tilt sensor, an infrared sensor, and tiny camera enabling it to identify objects and avoid them. In total, more than two thousand pieces, assembled in a rubber skin color camouflage. A NiMH battery provides approximately 1:30 of autonomy for 3:30 recharge.
Around fifty people gathered in San Francisco, took part in this development, whose main challenge was to articulate the physical part, detection and engine, the software element, while keeping in mind the original purpose : Attempt to replicate the attitude of a living being.
We just chose a dinosaur because we have no valid reference to the subject. It is not known how involved a young dinosaur, it leaves room for imagination. Considering our robot on a kitten or puppy would have been far more delicate, insofar as people would have expected to find behaviors that have already been observed in real life, "said Nat Southworth.
"Life OS, the operating system that drives Pleo, is now an environment owner, protected by a series of patents, but Uglobe aims to make the sources available to everyone in the near future, so as to federate a community around the development of applications for Pleo. Equipped with a mini-USB port and an SD card reader, Pleo is indeed able to learn new behaviors, via an update to its system or integration of new "scripts". "The range of possibilities is almost infinite," smiled Southworth, who left to raise features such as facial recognition "masters" of Pleo, via the camera embedded in its mouth.
55,000 coins have been sold since its launch in the USA and Great Britain in December 2007, and Ugobe cherishes the hope to reach or surpass the milestone of 200,000 by the end of the year. Its price should gravitate around 300 euros a sum relatively high, but still reasonable in Ugobe given the investments made.
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