your very own camarasaurus

During the Late Jurassic period, the Camarasaurus lived in North America and Europe. Full-sized, this quadruple herbivore grew to 23 feet high, 60 feet long and a weight of 40,000 pounds. The Camarasaurus been extinct for 144 million years, but Emeryville company Ugobe is hoping to change that.

Meet Pleo, a week-old infant Camarasaurus. Created by Caleb Chung, co-inventor of the wildly popular Furby, Pleo is a robot that adapts its personality and skills to its environment. Pleo has touch sensors, a microphone, a camera and 14 internal motors. Pleo also has 6 CPUs to control its very lifelike actions and its development as it progress from infant stage to puppy stage and through adolescence and adulthood.

Pleo received quite a bit of attention last Winter at DEMO 2006, and now that its $250 price is set and the February 3 pre-order date approaches, the folks at Ugobe have been making the PR rounds again. The latest Wired has a great feature on Pleo’s creators and development, and embedded early 2006 video of an infant Pleo waking up. The Sci Fi Channel has recent clips of Pleo walking and doing some tricks.

Read the January 2007 Wired article and check out a Pleo fan blog