After quickly converting the dollar price to danish kroner (DKK) I immediate went to order it, BAM!!! I was hit by a brick in the head, when reading this:

We ship to addresses in the United States.

Oh no!! Pleo is hatching but he can’t swim yet, thus it would not be safe to make him swim that long way across the ocean to Europe. Now once again, ill go to sleep crying for six months.. But stay put Pleo, I’ll be waiting by the beach when you finally arrive!

UPDATE: I got this response from Ugobe support, not much — but something;

“At this time, UGOBE is only taking pre-orders for addresses in the United States. UGOBE’s distributor for Denmark is Top Toy. Please contact them for information on ordering Pleo in your country.”

• PleoWorld

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It’s Alive!

Say hello to Pleo. From the guy who brought you Furby, it’s a snuffling, stretching, oddly convincing robotic dinosaur. You are so going to want one.

By Clive Thompson

WHEN I FIRST MEET PLEO, the tiny dinosaur is curled up on a kitchen table, its long tail and big head pulled inward. It’s snoring quietly, emitting a strangely soothing sound, almost like the amplified purring of a guinea pig. I’m tempted to reach out and touch it – but it looks so peaceful, I can’t bring myself to disturb it. | Then I realize what I’m doing: I’m worrying about waking up a robot. | Caleb Chung seems to understand my reluctance. “It’s OK,” the toy’s inventor says, motioning to the little green lizard. “You can touch him.” But before I do, Pleo wakes up on its own, fluttering open its doelike eyes and lifting its head. There’s a barely perceptible whizzing as its 14 internal motors spring into action and it struggles upright, stretching itself to get the kinks out. “You know, all your dogs do that,” Chung says as Pleo begins to poke around the table. “They wake up in the morning and go ‘ummmm’ – just like that.” The dino lets out a long, creaky honk.

“I think he wants to play,” Chung suggests, so I tentatively stroke the nubbly rubber skin on its back. It moos happily. A laptop on the kitchen table is monitoring Pleo’s internal state. As I trigger the touch sensors embedded in the toy, its “arousal” numbers start rising: 16, 23, 27, 28. It’s like a Matrix view of Pleo’s subconscious. I poke its left leg, and it cranes its neck curiously to see what just happened. I’m impressed. This feels less like interacting with a piece of machinery and more like playing with a kitten.

Chung knows how to create emotional connections to toys. Ten years ago, the bushy-haired, hyperkinetic inventor conceived Furby, selling more than 40 million of the yammering gremlins in a worldwide craze that launched the now-booming industry of robotic pets. A string of artificial companions have since trundled off the production line: the FurReal cat, the Roboraptor, the Robosapien, the Aibo and its litter of me-too electronic pooches. Household robots have arrived – not as servants doing our laundry but as helpless, babylike things that demand we take care of them.

Read the complete article at Wired Magazine.

• Wired 15.01: It’s Alive!
• Video on YouTube of Pleo in action

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There’s one thing the so-called companion robots released by Sony, Honda and others have in common: they haven’t sold well.

Ugobe, however, hopes to change that next year with a cheaper, more versatile toy called the Pleo. Pleo is a robotic dinosaur coming in the second quarter of 2007 that reacts “emotionally” to its surroundings.

If you talk to it in a coo, it becomes more responsive, wagging its tail and offering to shake hands. If you are curt, it can display signs of being depressed–its back slumps, it emits a mooing sound and its tail drags plaintively. It can express joy and aggression. It can also yawn, sigh, sniff, sniffle, snore, cough, hiccup and sneeze.

A camera in the robot’s nostrils lets it “see,” and multiple sensors under its feet and skin can respond to touch. While it won’t recognize spoken commands, it will recognize tones and react to what it senses in them.

“You can consider it more of a lifelike creature than a toy,” Ugobe CEO Bob Christopher said during an interview at CNET’s San Francisco headquarters. “We’re kind of putting psychology back into robots.”

• Don’t be rude to this robot | CNET News.com

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