As we say goodbye to the 200x’s and welcome the 201x’s it’s good to pause a bit and think about the world as it was ten years ago. There was no Wikipedia, no YouTube, internet access was still dialup for a huge portion of the population, and we didn’t have a whole heap of really cool robots. To highlight some of the great inventions of the past ten years, we’ve selected 10 of the best robots fom the past 10 years.

With any sort of list like this, things are pretty arbitrary, but we tried to pick robots that have made an impact in our culture or have impacted the hobby or science of robots in a major way. Below you’ll find 10 amazing robots from the military, toy industry, consumer industry, and science community that have had a lasting impact on robotics.

Take a look and tell us what you think. If you had to nominate 10 robots of the decade, who would they be? Keep reading for our picks for robots of the decade.

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In case you missed the news, Ugobe, maker of the amazing robotic pet Pleo, has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and has auctioned off all of its goods as of May 29th. It’s still unclear what will happen to all of the IP, and there’s potential that some buyer may resurrect our little robot pal, but that remains to be seen as news of the auction goes live.

As a nice recap to Ugboe’s rise and fall, John Sosoka, the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) made a presentation to the Standford University EE380 lecture series class, entitled “The Rise and Fall of a Companion Robot: Lessons Learned from Pleo“.  You can watch a full video of the lecture here. It’s a fascinating talk for anyone that’s interested in bringing a robotic product to the mass market. John talks for about 40 minutes and answers questions afterward.  He talks about “what went wrong” with Ugobe, instead of the usual technical discussion, and considering that the lecture was given on the eve of the asset auction for Ugobe, the talk is twinged with sadness.

Ugobe was formed in 2004, released its first product in 2007, sold over 100k units worldwide, and was seeking an additional $20 million USD round of funding in the late Summer of 2008. Due to the economic collapse, this didn’t happen, and their chances of survival were pretty much eliminated. By April 2009 the company had filed bankruptcy. So, the most obvious reason for Ugobe’s failure was a money issue, but John points out that the bigger and more serious problem was that Ugobe never figured out what Pleo really was. Was it a toy? A robotic gadget? A research tool? They never honed in on a marketing message, and consequently weren’t able to make the jump from selling 100k units to early adopters to selling 1 million units to the general public. Pleo was more than a toy, and different from a pet and they couldn’t come up with a way of describing that. So, even if the $20 million dollar funding had come through, the company still may very well have collapsed. Additionally, rapid growth of the company and a lot of venture funding confused the core goals and caused them to lose focus.

Mixed in with John’s talk were some fun facts about Pleo. He said the wholesale cost of Pleo was $195, and the cost to manufacture each one was $140 – a pretty good price considering the complexity, processing power, etc. Sosoka estimated that the company spent about $7 million dollars before shipping the first unit. Another interesting tidbit was that 15k of the 100k Pleos were bought in the (relatively small) Itallian market, thanks to the distributor there. Sosoka lamented using the US distributor (which I hear might have been Senario LLC, can anyone confirm?), saying that they regretted this relationship.

Again, I recommend watching John’s talk if you’re interested in the business of robotics.

Pleo’s can still be purchased from Amazon.com for a steep discount.

In honor of the 1 year anniversary of the official Pleo website, PleoWorld , Ugobe is offering a steep discount on Pleo’s purchased through the website. By using the online offer code, "PLEOWORLDISONE", at checkout, you can get a Pleo for the incredibly low price of $235. Keep in mind that the sale only lasts through JULY 11th, so order fast.

You may also notice, that Ugobe now offers replacement batteries for Pleo. Be sure to pick up an extra if you’d like extended play (or experimentation time) with you new robotic dino-pal.

Ugobe has also released a new update for Pleo,  Pleosarous Rex, which makes Pleo act like Godzilla.

Pleo is a great toy and is ripe for hacking. Getting one for $235 is a steal, so I highly suggest you take Ugobe up on the deal. Now, I just have to convince my wife that I need two …

Today UGOBE has released initial details on the upcoming software development kit for Pleo. The Pleo Development Kit, or PDK, will allow users to create applications that will run on top of Pleo’s "Life OS". The applications will be written in PAWN, which is … 

The initial PDK release will focus on giving users access to Pleo’s motors, sensors, and other low-level OS features. Future PDK releases will expose all of Pleo’s Life OS to applications, creating a huge array of potential applications.

Applications will be allowed to override built-in Pleo behavior, which UGOBE calls "shadowing", to allow users to take total control of Pleo and his behavior.

Unfortuntely, it will still be a while before the PDK is released (no word on an exact date). In the meantime, UGOBE says to play around with the "My Skit" performance editor for Pleo, and to brush up on your PAWN skills. More information can be found on the PleoWorld website and the new developer section of the PleoWorld forums. If you’re getting excited about writing custom applications for Pleo, you can go ahead and purchase one from our buddies at TrossenRobotics.

 

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Ugobe seems to be facing a bit of controvery over its new Pleo toy. Hot off the heels of a big story on Digg about Pleo, came another, even bigger story, about how the dino wasn’t all that smart after all. Somone took the two released videos of Pleo and compared then, noting that they were almost identical. Were Pleo’s actions scripted? You can see the video and some initial commentary here.

I contacted Ugobe about the problem via PleoBot.com and posted their reply. Apparently both videos were made for DEMO2006 and they were scripted. The real Pleo is still in development and is slated for a Christmas 2006 release.

It’s unfortunate for Ugobe that all of this came up. How about helping them out (and me) by going and digging the story about their response.

Stay tuned to PleoBot.com for more info and pics on our loveable not-fake-anymore robot dino pet.

Here’s finally some video of Ugobe’s Pleo robotic dinosaur. If you’re not up to speed on Pleo, check out our previous post on the little guy. For about $200 he’s supposed to have "life-like" motion with 14 motors and over 40 sensors. From the video, he does actually look pretty life-like. They call it a, "life-form operating system that brings robots to life." They say they’re markting the project to families as a pet, not as a toy.

However, the video didn’t show him actually walking, only moving his head around. But, for $200, I’m still interested.

For more information, check out the official Pleo website.