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Robotics Businesses Toys

Pleo Robot Dinosaur Back From Extinction 42

Posted by kdawson from the one-pleosaur-please dept.
robotsrule sends in a follow-up to our earlier discussion of the bankruptcy of Ugobe, maker of the Pleo robotic dinosaur: "Jetta Company Limited, based in China and Hong Kong, the company that manufactured the Pleo baby robot dinosaur for Ugobe, has bought the intellectual property rights and other assets at the Ugobe bankruptcy sale that occurred on May 21. Jetta is an established company with a 32-year history in manufacturing. They have issued a short press release announcing Pleo's rebirth. Steve Ohler, the US liaison for Jetta, confirmed the news, saying that the company is firmly committed to re-launching Pleo and continuing the line including producing accessories such as the vital battery and charger components. Jetta, as the original manufacturer, is the best possible company to have acquired Ugobe's intellectual property and to announce plans to re-launch Pleo. Ohler remarked that all of the equipment needed to produce Pleos and accessories is still intact and ready to go."
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Pleo Robot Dinosaur Back From Extinction More

Pleo Robot Dinosaur Back From Extinction

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  • Shucks... (Score:3, Funny)

    by thebryce ( 1076543 ) * on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:29AM (#28264025)
    ...I was hoping for a leopluradon. A magical leopluradon.

  • Remember 'Chaos Theory' Guys! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:29AM (#28264031) Journal
    Surely, after seeing Jurassic Park, nobody could possibly think that reviving an extinct race of robotic dinosaurs could possibly be a good idea?
    • I didn't RTFA, but did they merge the robots with frogs this time? It'd be an amazing frog-bot!
    • Dinobots, only in league with Skynet!

    • In related news, Jetta Company, Ltd., will be changing its name to Cyberdyne Systems. And, in other news, Congress has passed the Skynet Funding Bill, which is set to remove human decisions from strategic defense. Details at 11.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If they only made it 5 times bigger. Then I could walk it around the block and freak out my neighbors. Well, they may need to build a different more aggressive dinosaur, that would charge at people and other small animals, but that would be cool.

  • that was a close shave! (Score:5, Funny)

    by edittard ( 805475 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:30AM (#28264033)
    We can all sleep soundly tonight, secure in the knowledge that we can still have toy robotic dinosaurs.

    • If anyone saw the telesales task on the [UK] apprentice, I think this was one of the potential products. They didn't choose it.

      I'm sure that's what drove them into bankruptcy.

  • Maybe I'm ignorant, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:38AM (#28264103) Journal

    What is a Pleo, and why should I care?

    A: It's an animatronic toy dinosaur [wikipedia.org] from ~2006. And I shouldn't care.

    It would be nice for the article summary to briefly state this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Rhaban ( 987410 )

      maker of the Pleo robotic dinosaur

      the company that manufactured the Pleo baby robot dinosaur

      They should have used the word "toy" somewhere, just to be sure it wasn't giant rocket-launching baby dinosaur robots.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by clickety6 ( 141178 )

      Why should you care?

      It's a dinsoaur AND it's a robot!

      Yes! A dinosaur AND a robot in one!

      All it needs is a frickin' laser mounted on it's head and you can take over the world!

      • My 2-year-old son likes to watch this cartoon called Mechanimals [discoverykidsbrasil.com] that proved me that dino-robots can be boring as hell.

      • It's a dinsoaur AND it's a robot!

        Change that to "It's a pirate-ninja AND it's a robot!," and you may be on to something.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Rhaban ( 987410 )

          can suck energy or â"or suck out your powers or somethingâ¦something to do with suckingâ¦and when he overdoes it, he turns into this giant green olâ(TM) Jurassic Park thingâ¦like a dinosaurâ¦a vampire dinosaurâ¦vampire or dinosaur would have been enough, but this guy is bothâ¦which reallyâ¦is just showing off

          Spiderman, The New Avengers.

          Now, what about a beowulf cluster of ninja-vampire-robot-dinosaur-pirates?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by junglee_iitk ( 651040 )

      Yes they do! In the very first sentence of it:

      "... a follow-up to our earlier discussion of the bankruptcy of Ugobe [slashdot.org], maker of the Pleo robotic dinosaur"

      How lazy are you to not check the article on Ugobe before complaining on Pleo?

      • Oh, I checked the article. But the summary and even the title make it seem like this dinosaur is something that EVERYONE is aware of already. It just doesn't strike me as front page–worthy news.

        • Well, it has been discussed twice already. You are a little late in complaining about newsworthy-ness :)

          PS: I sounded rude in my last comment. Sorry :(

    • Re:Maybe I'm ignorant, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by camperdave ( 969942 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @10:35AM (#28265523) Journal
      Two 32-bit ARM7 processors
      Four 8-bit processors for motor control
      Fourteen tiny motors
      One color camera
      Two microphones
      One IR transmitter
      One accelerometer
      Eight capacitance touch sensors

      Why should you care? Sounds like something that's just begging to be hacked.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Bluesman ( 104513 )

        Good idea. My hacked version will seek out other robot dinosaurs and "mount" them. I think it will be great for parties.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )
        If they were to put a USB port on the thing to allow easy hacking this would be the hottest geek toy come Christmas, especially if it could use the same command set that the Lego robotics package uses.
        • Apparently, there is a slot for an SD card.

        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          It supports both a SD card and a USB port. There is a dev kit for building behaviors that can be shared as files and placed on an SD card to add to your pleo with no risk to the core behaviors.

      • When the company went under, these things showed up on Amazon for $50! For that kind of price, what devout hardware hacker wouldn't pick one up?

        Now that they are being produced by a company that needs to survive, I'm guessing the price will go back up? Hopefully not all the way back to the original $200.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SpinyNorman ( 33776 )

      I think "animatronic toy" is being a bit dismissive, even if it didn't live up to the hype.

      It's really an autonomous robot that learns and reacts to the environment - it's not just a robot with a remote or a canned set of moves.

      That said, the degree of learning and autonomy it displays seems to be rather limited, although the promise was for this to be imporoved in subsequent software releases.

      The reason you, as a Slashdot denizen, should care, is:

      1) As an autonomous robot - with vision and hearing - it is

  • What is it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by will_die ( 586523 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @09:00AM (#28264289) Homepage
    If you are wondering what this is, here is a picture [blogcdn.com] and here [blogcdn.com].
    More info here [ifixit.com].
  • I always remembered these things having a strong following among both hackers, and the children of the rich. There's a market there, now if only the chinese company can lower the cost so it doesn't seem like you're buying an actual pet without any of the benifits of having a live animal.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > the benifits of having a live animal.

      Portable fresh food?

  • continuing the line including producing accessories such as the vital battery and charger components.

    If such accessories are vital, the damn toy should have been designed to accept generic batteries and charger instead of @#$$% proprietary consumables. This is one of the suckier aspects of capitalism.

  • Leaves me wonder. How much did they pay for the IP rights and how much would they cost if the company didn't bankrupt?
  • not at all what we all crave / they will never save the day/ BURMA SHAVE

  • ...in Johor Bahru [wikipedia.org], Malaysia out near the Taman Desa Cemerlang suburb, was happily promoting the Pleo toy to local traffic.

    I was throw for a loop because I thought the company went bankrupt. It's possible they simply forgot to take it down. And now, they don't need to.

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