Maker

“Pleo’s movement has ‘noise’,” says Chung. “That’s what makes it organic. And because he moves naturally, his movement becomes invisible — and that’s when you become interested in what Pleo can do, what he’s thinking.”

Thinking Pleo

The question is, what can Pleo do or think about? At this point, it’s a little theoretical because Pleo is still a prototype. But according to Chung and Sosoka, Pleo will be autonomous first and foremost — which means no remote control.

“When you leave for work in the morning, your dog doesn’t sit by the door all day. He explores; he does stuff. Pleo will be doing something when you’re gone because he’s alive”, says Sosoka, without a trace of irony.

Pleo will also remember and adjust his behavior accordingly; in other words, he will learn. If you twist Pleo’s leg, he’ll know you’re abusing him. He’ll cry out and limp, and you won’t be able to play with him for a while. He’ll store that grudge, cataloging the event and assigning it a value. The next time you try to play with him, he may snap at you. Conversely, the more you reassure and nurture Pleo, the quicker his naturally sunny nature will reappear.

As you’d expect, Pleo is programmed with strategies for solving certain problems, such as finding food. But ultimately, says Chung, you can’t program every possibility. “You have to let him choose. Pleo keeps a record of what works and what doesn’t — filtering experience the way all living things do.”

Like his Furby forebears, Pleo will be able to communicate with his kin, although Pleos will do more than swap colds. “When two or more Pleos get together, there’ll be some kind of meeting ritual and they’ll pick the ‘alpha’ — and that Pleo will transmit behaviors and tricks and moods to the others,” says Chung. But that’s just a start.

You can plug Pleo into your PC via USB, run a little program, and adjust Pleo’s personality by moving sliders or writing scripts akin to JavaScript or Logo. Want to really hack Pleo? In the future, there may be a C/C+-style developer’s kit that lets you mod the dino to the max.

32 Make: Volume 08

www.makezine.com/08/interview

Whatever personality you create, you’ll be able to back it up and share it with others.

“Pleo is not a closed product. At every step we ask, ‘How can other people play with Pleo, modify it, personalize it?’” says Sosoka. Eventually, users will upload new personalities and tricks to Ugobe’s site that others can use. “Pleo is ultimately a platform, and creating new Pleo personalities is like making a movie.” Pleo, in short, is as much art form as life form.

Making Pleo

Building that art form, however, involved some real-world tradeoffs. For example, why build a robotic baby dinosaur? Why not a popular computer-game character?

It was a sound business decision, says Sosoka. “Dinosaurs are great, they’re already a brand, and you don’t have to pay royalties on them.” More important, says Chung, is that you’d never be afraid of a baby dinosaur like Pleo — he’s small enough to sit on your desk. And a baby anything is easier to animate. Adult creatures have sublime, complex movements; babies falter and stumble, and they have a smaller emotional palette. One plus even a baby camarasaurus offers: big, blocky legs, perfect for holding motors and gears.

And these motors and gears have been notable headaches. “Exotic magnets that go all the way around a motor are really powerful, really efficient, and really expensive,” says Sosoka. The solution? Write a sophisticated control program that makes cheaper, less accurate motors work better. Slap a 12-cent 6502 processor on the motor, says Sosoka, and you’ve got a smart servo that knows force feedback, self-clutching, and self-calibration. “We do a lot of localized intelligence, just like your body,” he adds. Off-the-shelf gearboxes were noisy, so the company turned to an “unrelated” industry for custom units.

Ugobe won’t disclose much about its real-time “Life OS” that oversees Pleo’s movements and cognition. Basically, Pleo is built around a simple, one-layer neural net; something happens and the event is weighted and remembered. Over time, the connection strength between a stimulus