ArsGeek

What exactly is an artificial life form and why should you care? In my book an artificial life form has two defining characteristics. It is anything man made that acts enough like a living entity that you anthropomorphize it. And it has to be able to learn on its own.This rules out your current computer, which you may be convinced is possessed by vaguely malicious spirits (that’s animism by the way, not anthropomorphism) because your computer can’t learn a damned thing without you spending hours banging your head against it’s screen and inserting little plastic circles into it. It also rules out your car, which may be the only thing on this planet less intelligent than your computer.

If you look back at the Furby trends of old, those are right out as well. Sure they were disgustingly cute and capable of getting an emotional response from folks, but they were incapable of learning.

What we are seeing however is a series of robotic contraptions entering our lives which are both capable of learning and of convincing us that they’re not just a pile of plastic and silicon. (We’re going to stay away from purely digital entities for the purposes of this little thought piece).

One particular forthcoming robot has caught my interest. A company called UGOBE is behind this and their stated mission is to blur the line between technology and life. UGOBE is a reworking of the phrase “You! Go and be!”. Cogito Ergo Sum for the modern age which embraces the idea of autonomous life.

Their upcoming flagship project is a little robot named Pleo. Pleo looks like a baby dinosaur. But not just a cutsie widdle cudwly dino. UGOBE is striving for a bit more. “With the goal of resurrecting a long-extinct species, UGOBE designers and engineers studied the Camarasaurus, a dinosaur from the Jurassic period, to recreate Pleo, a UGOBE Life Form, from the fossils of the original. Pleo’s height and
weight are consistent with that of a one-week old infant Camarasuarus, a species born and raised in giant fern forests. They evolved camouflage that allowed them to blend in with their environment of ferns, moss, and ruff, the detritus that littered the forest floor.”

Wow. My geek lights are flashing and I’m even tempted to use the blink tag here.  Not only are we talking dinosaurs but robotic dinosaurs capable of reacting to their environment. Here’s where it starts to get better. UGOBE don’t consider themselves toy makers, or robot manufacturers. They consider themselves to be Life Form engineers. Emphasis on the capitals. Why?

“Pleo incorporates all the basic traits of autonomous life and is specifically engineered to mimic life and relate to its owner on a personal level. Pleo will let its user know how it feels at any moment, and he is capable of multiple expressions, including joy, aggression, sorrow, and fear—every Pleo eventually exhibits a unique personality. Pleo can also sigh, sniff, sniffle, snore, cough, hiccup, and sneeze, and when Pleo is tired, he will become drowsy and go to sleep, and sometimes even dream. Pleo is equipped
with sensors for sight, sound and touch. He will begin life with certain tendencies but will learn and change his behavior as he explores his environment, exhibiting genuine reactions to sensory stimuli. Pleo will stretch when he first wakes up, and may cry when frightened or hungry. ”

How does UGOBE go about creating something like this? They’ve engineered their own complex system of tools and software named the Life Form Operating System (Life OS) which is designed specifically to handle input from sensory devices and allow Pleo to react and interact with the world around it. Think sight, sound, touch and perhaps even the other to oft neglected robotic senses, smell and taste. It’s a system that allows their individual units to start of with an inherent set of traits which are modified by their environment. Nature and nurture. This means that no two Pleos will be alike, but will be influenced by their environments as they learn about the world around them and discover different ways to deal with that world. Did I mention that UGOBE isn’t just a group of engineers? Their multi-disciplinary group also contains philosophers, biologists and at a guess cognitive development specialists.

Could it be that the rise of learning machines and that Artificial Intelligence we’ve all heard so much about will come not from the government sector, not from research facilities or universities, but from the private sector. Making what many would classify as toys no less? I’ve often held that good old profit driven business will be the driving force behind many of our next centuries major advances. Space exploration, travel and colonization has seen an incredible boost from the private sector. Same with computing and other electronics. Now we’ve got a ‘toy’ that can learn on it’s own looking to enter the lives of consumers everywhere in the near future.

That is why this little guy has me excited. I view this not only as an amazing looking product I’d love to get my hands on, but as a major step forward in the field of personal robotics and AI. Coming as it usually does out of left field from a small group of people.

I don’t know if I would rightly consider this just a toy. It’s not a pet either but falls into a still nebulous area somewhere in between. The Pleo goes through several life phases right before your eyes. When it’s first turned on and for the first 45 minutes of it’s life it’s an ‘Hatchling’, learning from it’s environment and gaining comfort from interaction. After that it enters its second phase of life, “Infant”. Here the Pleo explores it’s world. Finally the Pleo enters it’s last phase, “Juvenile”. Here’s where the unique personality of each Pleo will really emerge.

What an amazing concept. A fully constructed thing that not only children but most adults will have no problem recognizing as not a thing, but a being. How hard would it be to give your Pleo a name and get to know it’s individual traits and behaviors as it ‘grows up’ in your household? Not hard at all.

Blurring the line indeed. I’m going to be watching the development of the Pleo and of UGOBE closely because I’m personally very excited about what it is they are setting out to achieve. Will people look back at the Pleo and say “That’s where artificial life forms entered our lives”? Only time will tell on that one. I can say for certain that I’d love to get some time with one. UGOBE’s sold me on the idea.

Want some specifics on the Pleo? Here are some technical specs for you.

Every Pleo Life Form includes:
Significant Processing Power

• Two 32-bit Microprocessors – central and image processing
• Four 8-bit Subprocessors – motor control

Highly Articulated Movement

• 14 Motors
• Over 100 Custom-Designed Gears

Complex Sensory Network

• Infrared and camera-based vision system – object and color detection and navigation
• Two Microphones – binaural hearing
• Eight Skin Sensors – head, chin, shoulders, back, legs
• Four Foot Switches – surface detection
• 14 Force-feedback sensors – one per joint
• Orientation Tilt Sensor – body position
• Infrared Mouth Sensor – food detection

Multiple Data Ports

• Mini USBTM port – online downloads
• SDTM card slot – Pleo add-ons
• Infrared transceiver

High-Quality Sound

• Two Speakers – mouth and back

Power Source

• Rechargeable and replaceable NiMH battery pack

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