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)