There are lots of online rumors about what pleos can and cannot do. Some of them spill over from rumor into true belief. In such cases we sometimes end up with owners who feel they have been cheated when their pleo doesn’t perform the way they are said to do according to these rumors. There are too many for me to write about here in this blog but I will try to shed some light on some of the more obvious ones.
Rumor one: pleo will come when you call him while in its normal operation. This isn’t true. While it is moving around, the pleo’s motors are far too loud for it to make sense of what it is hearing. This applies to both the Ugobe and RB models. While the pleo may indeed look at you when you speak to him, he is merely registering the sound of your voice as a noise worth investigation but doesn’t understand that you are calling him. Of course, the RB’s are a slight exception to this rule but they require the owner to first train them to come using the “Come to me” learning stone. Even after you use the stone, it will still not come to you if you shout to him from a distance. You have to get the RB’s attention by touching its cheeks, calling its name, and then when it acknowledges that it heard you, use the words you used to train the pleo to come to you. To me this stone is kind of a joke as you have to already be touching it which means the pleo is less than four feet from you when you ask it to come.
Rumor two: you can encourage a pleo into higher intelligence. This also isn’t true. While you can alter a pleo’s natural attributes using third party applications like Change RB, you cannot change its intelligence through interaction or expect it to remember a regiment of good/bad behavior. To us they may seem stubborn but it is the nature of its programming. As I am merely a pleo-owner and not a programmer, I can’t go into a lot of detail why this is but there you go.
Rumor three: pleos can learn to play games other than the ones they are programmed to play. While we can do some clever things with red or green balls that can sometimes look like the pleo is kicking the balls around, this isn’t really possible. In some cases, they may track a red or green object if one is patient enough and moves it slowly around in front of their pleo’s face, they cannot truly learn any sort of external games. This tracking behavior is limited to Ugobes running certain operating systems and to Pleo RB. Pleo RB’s tracking behavior is much more defined than the Ugobe and requires a certain pattern of colors primarily found on the rubber tracking leaf they came with. They will make very obvious sniffing sounds and will follow the leaf as you move it around, sometimes taking steps to keep it in view.
I hope I haven’t ruined anyone’s picture of their robotic companion, I just felt compelled to point some of these things out so that would-be owners aren’t disappointed if their pleos aren’t performing as they have been led to believe. Anyone with more programming knowledge or better observational skills are free to set me straight if I am wrong about any of the things I have written today. Regardless of what they are or not, I love my little robotic pals and I look forward to bringing more of their adventures and my observations to you.
