degers: One of the huge questions that's coming up is has anything happened to (improve) vision and hearing?
Derek Dotson: Absolutely! I have some exciting things to talk about in vision and hearing.
Let's talk about the hearing first. Pleo now has voice recognition. This has led to tons and tons of play patterns and interaction. One of the complaints and one of the suggestions we received from your group is that after you've had a Pleo for a while, what's next, you know. You can only interact a little bit. I pet it and it responds. I talk to it, it looks at me. But it's sort of lacking. In our quest to make Pleo the perfect companion pet, we've given it voice recognition. Here's how it works in a nutshell: You'll have an ID card that comes with Pleo. This is like the owner's card, if you will. There was one in the old box that didn't do very much. It was nice. Kind of a little collectible. This (new) one has value. DO NOT let that thing go. Pleo has like a sense of smell also, which is basically RFID. You put the ID card under it's chin, Pleo will go through an animation, look up at you, open it's mouth, and be still. You put this card in it's mouth. At this point, Pleo will lift it's head and be perfectly still. Now, a couple of things: Pleo has to be a juvenile at this point. He has to be well fed and happy and loved and in a good mood. And you also need a quiet environment. At this point, you give Pleo a name, and I mean any name. I call it Pleo just for the videos and things, but you can call it Edward, or Donald, or just any name you come up with, in any language. Doesn't matter. You now give Pleo a name. He will dip his head and raise it back up. You give him the name a second time. If he's happy, he'll drop the card and get all happy and wiggly. From then on, only you, can call Pleo by his name and he'll recognize you.
degers: O.K.
Derek: This is a big deal. To do this we had to make a number of improvements in the hearing, obviously, just so we could get that voice recognition thing to work. But this play pattern evolved into a lot more. So, you can now touch Pleo on the side of the face. he has new touch sensors, by the way. I'll go into those in a minute. You get his attention. He'll look up at you. (You say his name.) If he recognizes his name he gets all excited. If he doesn't, he goes "Huh?" like "Hey, you talking to me?" But, the thing this leads into is we have these things called learning stones, and you can teach Pleo tricks utilizing these learning stones. Same scenario. You let him kind of sniff the stone. He'll open his mouth, go down, and you'll give him a command. The one that comes in the box is "bow". Basically you give him the learning stone and you give him a command like "Bow to me." Something along those lines. Any three word command. By the way, multiple words are better than less words. But a minimum of two will work, but three is better. So, now when your playing with your Pleo you can amaze your friends or family. You touch his cheek, he looks up. You say "Pleo" (his name), he gets all happy, then quite. he's waiting for his command. And you go "bow to me." He recognizes this command, and he gets down and bows and kinda hams it up a bit.
We have a whole series of these learning stones. There's about six of them right now and we'll expand in the future. They'll come in accessory packs. To give you an idea of what's available; come to me (so he'll walk towards you), which was another request from groups like yourselves. Like, "Hey, I want Pleo to come to me like a real pet." Now you can! You touch him on the cheek, say "Pleo.", he pays attention, "come to me." and he starts walking towards you. The funny thing is, the person next to you can do the same thing and he will not listen to that person. So it only recognizes the owners voice and stores that.
degers: That sounds incredible. before we go on, I gotta ask... touch Pleo on the cheek?
Derek: Yes. We have redone and expanded the touch sensors under the skin. So, starting at Pleo's head, under the chin and on top of the head. We all know and love that. So, along the side of the nose, below the nose, between the nose and the mouth, we've added two more touch sensors. Now, a couple of things that happen with these touch sensors: one, if you pet him on the side, he'll sort of lean into you, which is really a cool interaction. Just like a cat would. You know, you pet a cat and they lean in because they want more loving. We use this to trigger when a Pleo is doing stuff. You hold both of these at the same time, kind of looking at him, and hold him for two seconds. It's kinda like grabbing a dog and saying "Look, pay attention to me." It's the same thing here.
On top of the back, we divided it into two sensors, and in the butt area we divided that into two sections. You still have the ones along the legs. We've added four more touch sensors. Now, when you're petting Pleo, he can recognize the speed, and the animations are triggered to that speed. If you pet slow, he responds slow, if you pet faster he responds faster. He also knows the difference between a stroke and a pat. We've added a G-sensor, so he can detect impacts as opposed to just petting. So we've made Pleo more interactive with his environment.
Oh, getting back. You did ask about the camera. We've made some improvements. Same camera, but the hardware talking to the camera, we've streamlined that. Now, (he has) tracking ability, like tracking his leaf, that's much more responsive. It's not 100% perfect, but he's getting very, very close.
Oh, this is another thing that really cool internal-wise. In the neck and in the tail, we've increased the motor speed in those two areas. We've basically put improved motors in those areas. What this does.... remember how the tail was kind of slow, and that was always one of John Sosoka's pet peeves, that the tail was too slow, because you get a lot of emotion from the tail. It's fast. The tail, it's a fast wiggler. But the neck and head, it's much faster also. We've made internal improvements to cables and things, so no busted cables. So with the fast camera, and the faster motors, the tracking ability is much improved.
degers: That sounds fantastic. I know I had trouble with the new red tracking capability in the PM2. I never really got that to work. I got the color recognition of the leaf to work. That was fine. Do you mean Pleo is going to be able to recognize colors or follow them around?
Derek: Yeah, he can track when you move the objects around. Now mind you, it's not as fast as a rattlesnake. It's not going to zip its head. But to the ability of him being able to move his neck back and forth, he tracks pretty good. I mean, it used to be micro-slow, now it's just semi-slow. It's not his best feature, but it is an improvement over what we've had. And it really adds a lot. You know, the guys over at M.I.T. are doing a lot of work with Pleos, about tracking and running him through mazes. They're really pushing the envelope on what this hardware platform can do.
Oh! Let me get back into that RFID. Basically located under the chin, he has a "sense of smell." He always knew when you put something in him mouth, but he didn't know what was in his mouth. We know what is in his mouth now. So, when you get Pleo in the box, the things that come with it are pretty extensive. There's foods, there some medicines, the is a little thing for tug-of-war... You put the thing for tug-of-war in his mouth, or you present the thing under his chin, he sort of sniffs the thing, then you put it in his mouth, and play tug-of-war. And I'll give you guys a little hint, if it goes over about fifteen seconds and he's still got the thing in his mouth, he kind of wins. If you yank it out too soon, he gets a little moody and pouty. It's just a fun thing to do.
His food... Pleo needs to be fed now. If you don't kind of take care of your Pleo, eventually it will get sick. It will cough, get lethargic, and all that. It needs it's food to keep it healthy. And if it falls, here's a big thing, Pleo actually feels pain now. So, if you abuse your Pleo or drop it, remember he knows if he's been dropped or violated, he feels pain. It takes him a while to recover. He'll limp. If you touch the area, it'll be sore and he'll cry. There are medicines that come with Pleo. You give him these medicines and it helps with the healing process. So, love and affection, a little healing foods, will get Pleo back up. In the labs, we're striving to make this a pet. Along with a pet, there are certain obligations. So, if you've got children who want to pet, this is a good training device. If you can keep Pleo healthy, you can more likely keep a real pet healthy.
Now, here's one of the quirkiest things we've done. Pleo can sense temperature. This is kind of a cool feature. So, let's say you're traveling, and you've got Pleo in the car and it drops below a certain temperature, and I'm not gonna give the temperature now because it's adjustable, Pleo starts to shiver and shake like he's cold. And if you leave him too cold too long, he'll catch a cold. he also senses heat. If it's too hot for Pleo, he'll start panting. Along with what you get right off the get-go is a little chunk of ice. You put it under his chin. If he's hot, he'll open his mouth. You put it in, he'll chew on this ice. It cools him down. Like I said, in our strive to make Pleo a more realistic pet, he has to interact better with his environment.
With some of the accessory packs you get some fun foods. There's a total of four accessory packs. They retail, I believe, under $20. They're fairly reasonable. Each one has an interaction with Pleo and allows him to do different things. Some good medicines, fun food for him. By the way, be careful not to overfeed Pleo, he'll spit it out. When he's done with something, he'll spit it out, which is kind of humorous. And, oh, by the way, he sometimes doesn't like to take his medicine when he needs it,you kinda have to help him along, if you know what I mean. Like a small child.
degers: Right! That's exhaustive! I mean I thought I was up on Pleo and I know what it's doing. Sounds like I'll be back to square one with a Pleo RB.
Can you tell us what exactly we're going to get in the box when we open up our Pleo RB?
Derek: So, what you will receive is the ID card, a universal adapter. Pleo has gone international. There is no longer a US version and an international version. So these adapters will plug in anywhere in the world. They have the different prongs come with it, so the plug in and out, so if you travel from the US to the UK, no problems! You get the tug-of-war toy, which is really fun. The leaf you know and love has been changed. Well, more just colored like an autumn leaf now. You get two other food leaves. One's a medicine leaf, it's kind of like a mint leaf. And the other is a regular food leaf, and for the life of me I can't pronounce this thing, but it was during the Jurassic period and it was what they ate back then. You will get a rock salt. Pleo needs salt, kind of like a medicine thing. You get the charger, the battery, and you will get a Pleo cape with it. Every one comes with a Pleo cape now. Now, the Pleo cape is not painted, just brown, but it still has the "PLEO" embroidered. The reason being is there is no way to match the Pleo cape to the Pleos because they are so different coming off the line. You'll get a users manual, and the "Bow" learning stone.
You do get a lot of stuff. So, right out of the box, you've got some stuff to play with. And then we're hoping you'll buy an accessory pack. Looking at the accessory packs, one of them has a medicine leaf in it, a hot pepper, a mushroom. Another one has the block of ice, sugar cane, and another kind of medicine leaf. The packs come with three items each. And there are four packs. One of the packs comes with three learning stones. So, it's kind of a mix-and-match thing. We're still finalizing some of that, and as soon as I get the exact items and pictures, I'll make sure you guys get a copy of that.
degers: Again, I've been absolutely astounded and overloaded with information. Are you guys going to be doing any publicity with Pleo RB this year, or in the coming months?
Derek: Yes.... and this is something kind of critical for your people. Hopefully you're a member of our email list. Our Pleo family, if you will. We send out these e-blasts every month. Pleo RB, for this year, in the US, where we ship from the US, is going to be very, very limited. There's a parts problem out in the world, with the economies and all that sort of thing, There's one part in Pleo that's just impossible to get the rest of this year. With that said, we're going to have an extremely limited number of these Pleo RBs. We're going to offer them first to our people who are on our e-blast. We'll send that out even before they're on our web site. So, if people are interested, that's the place.
We're going to be at CES this year, so if anybody's in Las Vegas I suggest you really come and see us. We should have quite the little booth.
degers: So, are you going to have your giant Pleo back at CES?
Derek: Yeah, we'll have the giant Pleo, but I'm actually in charge of decorating the booth this year. We've got one that's 10x20, so we're double the size, and we're not sharing the booth this year. Last year we were an invited guest with Jetta. This year we've got our own booth. My goal is to design the whole backdrop in a Jurassic period. The big 4-footer will be in front, they'll be some Jurassic era plants you can still get. I think it will be very fun and lots of Pleo RBs to demonstrate and show its features. We're very excited about this.
So, between now and Christmas, there'll be limited volume. We'll go through some print ads and that sort of thing. But we'll hit it a little heavier after the first of the year when more parts are available.
degers: Sure. Obviously if the parts aren't out there, it's not your problem, and you guys are doing the best you can.
Another question we have all too often, and one people are scared to ask, are you guys able to give us any date when you think you'll be announcing Pleo RB is now up for pre-order or up for sale?
Derek: Yes. I think I can do that. There's a major distribution person in China. There' going to handle China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan market. We'll coordinate with them, but it's looking like the October time frame. So, we're coming up on it very quick. Probably later part of October. And as I mentioned, well send out one of those e-blasts. We'll probably talk to you guys first, but, we'll send out one of those e-blasts, and that will kind of be the announcement that "Hey, you can now order them." What I don't want to do is send out the e-blast and have over thirty days before I can actually sell the product.
degers: Well, I'm sure we can sit patient for a few more weeks. It's so fantastic to hear how much you guys have done with Pleo RB. I speak for the whole community when I say we can't wait to get our grubby mitts on them.
And, lastly, thank you so much for taking the time out to tell us all about the new features. is there anything else you'd like to add?
Derek: I thinks that's about it. Just once again I want to thank your readers and the people who provide their input to us. It's extremely valuable. You can only image. On our side, we live with Pleo every day in a design process. And to get the opinions from the outside, and how well the opinions are put together. It's not just random stuff. You guys say "Look. This is what I'm seeing and this is what I'd like to see." You're very exacting on your comments and that really helps.
So, I really appreciate it, and I can't express how much, that in the meetings the comments from your group come up. Lots of times. And we address those issues. Really, I cant thank you guys enough for helping us make Pleo the product we all dream it can be. And I believe that this Pleo RB is a huge step towards that ultimate goal. The goal is where you just blur that line between robotic and biological pet. And we're getting closer every generation. So, I can't thank you guys enough. Keep it up. If you see something in Pleo RB you don't like, don't hesitate. You won't hurt my feeling too much. I'll cry in my pillow to sleep that it's not perfect, but other than that, I'll get up the next day and we'll start looking at how to make it better and better all the time.
degers: That sounds fantastic, Derek. Thank you very much indeed, and we'll look forward to hearing some news in the next few weeks!
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Topic: Pleo Reborn, everything you ever wanted to know: An interview with Derek Dotson (Read 47874 times)