What can Pleo do?

With 14 motors, Pleo has a wide range of motions. He can walk, wag his tail and crane his neck. He can also do some things you would not expect. For example, he gets sleepy and then actually falls asleep. He responds when you pat him. He can catch cold and sneeze. Even emotions like anger and annoyance are possible.

What about a real live Pleo? A baby Camarasaurus is one thing. But if Pleo could actually grow to an adult, you might not want him as a pet. An adult, Camarasaurus grew to 60 feet long, 23 feet high and weighed 40,0000 pounds! The good news is that Camarasaurus was a plant eater, so at least he would not try to devour you.

Pleo also has a lot of sensors -- 38 to be exact. There are sensors to pick up sounds, sensors to detect touch and even sensors that can "see" normal and infrared light. And all the motors have force feedback sensors. The sensors in the motors can decide if a leg is jamming against something and keep the motor from burning out.

Photo courtesy of UGOBE, Inc

Any robot needs a way to "look at" the signals coming from all the sensors, and to control all the motors. And a robot pet needs to "act" like a pet. To handle all this thinking, any modern robot uses a computer. Inside Pleo, there are actually eight small computers. Why eight, instead of one? Part of it has to do with cost and power consumption -- small, low-power computers can be very inexpensive, but they can do only so much processing per second. So by having each computer do a specific thing (like controlling a leg or listening to sound), you divide up the load.

Pleo’s creators are also trying to do something that has not really been done before. Pleo is supposed to be a real pet-like robot. Pleo's designers want it to have emotions, and a personality. They also want Pleo to learn, at least in a small way. To do this, the designers will use artificial intelligence software, which needs computing power as well.

Photo courtesy of UGOBE, Inc

Bob Christopher is one of the people working on Pleo. According to him, Pleo needs to have at least three capabilities. First, Pleo must be able to show emotion. It might do this by stamping a foot, or changing the sound of its squawk. Second, Pleo must be able to tell what is happening in the world around it. It needs to know if it is daytime or nighttime. It needs to keep itself from falling down the stairs. The third thing is the hardest -- Pleo needs to change as it gets older, like real animals do. It might learn new tricks, get a deeper voice, move faster, and so on. The computers contain all the artificial intelligence software that makes these three things possible.