There’s a new friend with some benefits on the block and he’s available at a store near you…if you’re in Japan. Emotional robot Pepper sold by Japanese telecom giant Softbank went on sale for personal use in June and the first 1,000 were sold within minutes of the launch. Each bot costs $9000. Softbank has now announced that ‘Pepper for Biz’, a robot for enterprises will go on sale from October.
Pepper is a four-foot-tall, shiny white humanoid with beady black eyes and a three-wheel base on which trundles along. Pepper can analyze human gestures, voice tones and expressions from up to 10 feet away and, Softbank says, can even autonomously generate emotion. The robot can call out to people at a distance, ask opinions, play games and even crack jokes.
Associated Press reporter Yuri Kageyama spent some time with Pepper when it first went on sale. He observed: What's striking is the absolutely ardent attention it gives you — frankly a lot better than some real-life people. "You look a bit thin," it coos in a soft childlike voice, free of any rigid mechanical accent. "You should watch what you eat."
What a social robot like Pepper essentially does is perform all the activities you would normally do with various digital devices. It’s a one-stop for all digital functions and can potentially turn your home or office into a smart-home or smart-office.
Pepper belongs in the ranks of increasingly sophisticated personal social robots. Jibo is a table top robot developed by a researcher at MIT Media Lab. The cute and friendly Jibo functions as a personal secretary, educational assistant and social media manager all rolled into one.
Another French company Bluefrog Robotics is developing Buddy, who is also mobile on three wheels as he assists around a home or office.
Hitchbot was an experiment by two Canadian academics to study social robotics by recording how travelers communicated with Hitchbot who registered motion, speech and even spoke back. Hitchbot has hiked across Canada, Germany and The Netherlands and has just started off on its American adventure.
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