Hasta La Gadget!

The green, scaly Pleo — a robotic dinosaur — has taken its last breath as
its maker Ugobe filed for bankruptcy Monday. But the Pleo’s death is just the beginning of a tough battle for the fledgling U.S. consumer robotics industry’s survival.

Pleo joins at least three other consumer robots that have been shelved this year. Robot makers have been hit by a double whammy: A recession-inflicted downturn in consumer spending and a lack of mainstream acceptance of robots by American consumers. Those factors combined put the industry in a zone of pain.

"This situation is truly historical and unprecedented," says Robert Oschler, who runs the robot-enthusiast site Robots Rule. "We have a brand new high-tech market in consumer robots that was finally poised to take off broadly done in by a socioeconomic event," he says.

Consumer robots fall into two broad categories: Toys (like the Pleo or the popular WowWee Robosapien) and practical, utilitarian robots (like the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner or telepresence robots ConnectR and Spykee).

For now, the robotics toy market is near death, says Faysal Sohail, managing director of CMEA Ventures, which has invested in a few robotics startups.

"Anything that feels like a toy and does not provide any real value proposition beyond
entertainment is getting cut dramatically by consumers," says Sohail. "There’s just not enough consumer demand for it."

Instead, says Sohail, robot makers that offer more practical products will have a better shot at success.

But there’s a hitch there too. Although robots have played starring roles in popular culture (think R2D2 and Wall-E), mainstream U.S. consumers are not yet entirely comfortable buying and using robots, compared to their peers in Japan. Most users see robots as less practical or utilitarian objects and more as exotic tech creatures.

"Japanese consumers are a lot more comfortable with having robots around and integrating them into their lives," says Sohail. "And they are willing to put in that extra effort to make these robots work for them better, which is not what we have seen in the U.S."

Take iRobot’s Roomba robotic vaccum cleaner. The company has sold more than 3 million of its most successful consumer Roomba robot to date. But that’s a small percentage of the 10 million vacuum cleaners analysts estimate are sold in the country every year. A big reason? Users don’t have the patience or the tolerance for a robotic vacumm cleaner that isn’t entirely trouble-free.

Worse, robots targeted at consumers currently fall short, both in terms of the promises they make and the value they deliver, Sohail says.

"Our consumers are very finicky," says Sohail. "You have to hit a lot of things right in terms of technology, price point and usability before the product can go beyond just early adopters and into the mainstream."

So far, consumer robotics companies have failed to deliver on that trifecta. The Ugobe Pleo was launched for $350 two years ago and now retails for $245 through Amazon. Even with the price cut, that’s still a lot to pay for a pet that is not even alive, says Dan Kara, President of Robotics Trends, a consultancy firm focusing on the robotics industry.

"Sony, Ugobe, and others have jumped in too far into a marketplace that doesn’t exist and into an industry that is very cutthroat," says Kara. "The amount that they want consumers to pay and the features that they are offering ultimately don’t match up."

As for the telepresence robots ConnectR and Spyball, they are products that could be resurrected with a revival in the economy, he says.

Amy Weltman, Vice President of Marketing for WowWee, hints that Spyball could definitely make a comeback. "It isn’t unusual for a company to announce a product and then decide to delay it based on the fact that it isn’t the right product to introduce at that time," she says. As for whether U.S. consumers will have the appetite for robots, Weltman remains confident. "Absolutely," she says.

Oschler is similarly optimistic. "If we go to hoarding guns and gold all bets are off," says Oschler. "But my firm belief
is that it won’t happen, but this period of pain will last for some time."

For robot makers targeting consumers, the next two years will pose the
ultimate test of survival.

Photo: (Baboon/Flickr)

After months of teetering on the brink, Ugobe, maker of the the green, scaly, rubbery Pleo dinosaurs has taken its last breath.

The company has fired all its employees and filed for liquidation of its assets under the bankruptcy law, according to a report in the Idaho Statesman.

The Pleo was just about two years old, having been launched in January 2007. The company has sold about 100,000 Pleos till date.

Two months ago, we reported about how Ugobe was struggling to find fresh funding to stay alive. Last year the company saw a host of top management departures, ran through
two CEOs, closed down its office in California and pared down its
marketing and PR staff.

Yet Ugobe President and COO Doug Swanson while speaking to Wired.com in February seemed hopeful that the company could raise fresh funding to stay alive. Now Ugobe has said in its bankruptcy filing that it has assets of $1.6 million and liabilities of $3.6 million.

It’s a sad end for a company whose Pleo robot was recognized for its ability to realistically mimic a pet. The Pleo has a graceful motion and an uncanny ability to respond to human
interaction. The robot can respond to being
petted, makes feeding sounds, plays when engaged and can walk around the
house.

The Pleo, which cost $350 when it was introduced, now retails for $245 on Amazon. Most likely, once the current stock of Pleos are exhausted, the dinosaurs will be extinct.

Photo: Pleo (Mrs Gemstone/Flickr)

Honda Motor is set to unveil two robotic walking and lifting assistant exoskeleton devices in New York tomorrow. The company preannounced the prototypes today, giving the world a glimpse in video and photos of these two wearable technologies.

The same company that brought the world the ASIMO Humanoid  robot, American Honda Motors, has used what it learned about human locomotion to build the Stride Management Assist and the Bodyweight Support Assist.

The first prototype is a lightweight, wearable device intended to help the elderly and those with weakened leg muscles walk. In photos, users wear the Stride Management apparatus around their waists, hips and thighs. An internal computer actually regulates the user’s stride and walking pace to make it more consistent and, ultimately, effective.

The Bodyweight Support device is a more extensive apparatus. It extends from the waist and hips to the feet and even has a built-in seat that wearers straddle. That extra gear is necessary because the Bodyweight is not only intended to help those who have difficulty walking, but to assist the able in strenuous tasks, such as lifting heavy weights.

Honda plans on showing off these intelligent exoskeleton prototypes later this month at the  Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress at Detroit’s Cobo Center (April 20 – 23). However, Gearlog should have a hands-on report sometime tomorrow.

More photos of the prototypes after the jump.

Hiroshi Ishiguro’s over-sized “baby” robot, CB2, has made a lot of progress since we last reported on him…er..it, in 2007. According to a report on Breitbart.tv, the 73-pound, roughly 4-foot-tall robot can now walk with assistance, and navigate its way around a room. It’s also very adept at creeping people out by following them with its inky-black eyes. Apparently CB2 has been programmed to record facial emotions, much as a baby would, to help it better respond to human interaction. The Breitbart report also notes that just below its gray, silicon skin are a host of sensors so it can react to all kinds of subtle touches.

The researchers’ goal is to have CB2 talking–in a child-like-way–within two years. The rest of report recounts much of what we already know about the rapid pace of robotics development in Japan. There is, however, a bizarre diversion to Kokoro (a subsidiary of Hello Kitty manufacturer Sanrio). The company actually makes some life-size robots of its own, and its planning department manager, Yuko Yokota, spoke to Breitbart. His words really speak for themselves:

“Robots have hearts,” said Yokota. “They don’t look human unless we put souls in them. When manufacturing a robot, there comes a moment when light flickers in its eyes. That’s when we know our work is done.” 

Umm, yeah. Remind me never to buy one of those robots.

Two teams of researchers said on Thursday they had created machines that
could “reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on
their own,” a development that could potentially signal a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence, according to Reuters.

At Aberystwyth University in Wales, researchers created Adam, a robot that can carry out experiments on yeast metabolism, reason about the results, and plan the next experiment, the report said. So far it has already uncovered something new about the genetics of yeast, in what is apparently the first time a robot has ever made an independent scientific discovery.

Meanwhile, Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt of Cornell University in New York designed a computer program that can uncover the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum, teasing out Issac Newton’s laws of motion along the way, according to the article.

Eventually both groups plan to put more robotic designs to work in discovering new medicines and uncovering new scientific principles, respectively. (Image credit: Aberystwyth University)