Let's face it–until they're cooking us breakfast and doing our laundry, the most fun you can have with store-bought robots is the fun you make yourself. Sure, robots like WowWee's Roboraptor (and its companions, Robopet and Robosapien) are surprisingly capable for $60-to-$200 toys, with wide ranges of motion, touch sensors and powerful software. But it's those same out-of-the-box skills that make the 'bots such prime fodder for hackers.

Refer to "Pleo" as a robotic pet, and its co-inventor, Caleb Chung (of Furby fame), will quickly set you straight: Pleo is a designer life-form. That's because, on the outside, everything about the one-week-old Camarasaurus is very unrobotic. Its movements are fluid, not rigid; its actions are seemingly spontaneous and unprogrammed; and its skin is smooth, seamless and stretchy. Inside, however, the 3.3-pound Pleo is very robotic indeed.