Pleo: Dinosaurs Walk The Earth Again!

Robots -- by which I mean cool robots -- have long been more the province of movies and TV than the real world. There have been robotic toys, but most have been of fairly limited fuinctionality -- or too expensive for regular people to have in their lives.

Enter Pleo, a week old "camerasaurus" that moves, "sees", reacts to sounds, and generally appears to be of flesh and blood.

He's pretty darn cyute too:





The product of a company called Ugobe Life Forms, the realism is pretty remarkable.

Check it out:



So, if you are asking...why...then you don't get it.

Ugobe describes itself thus:

UGOBE™'s multidisciplinary team has blended engineering, life sciences, philosophy, and artistic design and developed a unique set of core technologies. The company's unique products, known as Life Forms, intend to blur the line between technology and life. By integrating three disciplines-organic articulation with sensory response and autonomous behaviors-UGOBE aims to revolutionize robotics and transform inanimate objects into lifelike creatures. Inspired by its dream, the group coined the word 'UGOBE', which translates to: "You! Go and be!" a creative reworking of Descarte's "Cogito ergo sum"-"I think, therefore I am."

The price is still a little steep as far as toys go, though the sheer quantity of technology in this little dude explains that pretty easily. At this point, Ugobe is available online only on their website.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.