Move over, Casper, turns out ghosts are the only thing that's friendly.
Meet Pepper, the first humanoid robot designed to live with humans.
Created for SoftBank Mobile, Japan's largest phone operator, Pepper is designed to be a human companion — -a social robot capable of communication via voice, touch and even emotions.
Pepper went on sale in Japan in June 2015, and has recently made its European debut. Stationed at a major shop in France, Pepper served as a faithful assistant, helping out shoppers choose recipes and pick out wine pairings. Pepper was also able to assess customer satisfaction.
"The main focus is to entertain people and to test how they react to seeing a robot in a shop. It is the first time we are getting Pepper out of Japan, so we will see the reaction of users in France," shared Magali Cuber of Aldebaran Robotics in an interview.
Since its launch in Japan, over 4,000 Pepper robots have been sold by Aldebaran, 98 percent of which is owned by SoftBank. The first 1,000 units sold out in a matter of minutes. Since then, Aldebaran has consistently sold 1,000 units each month. Priced at 1,500 euros or $1,650, each unit also requires an additional monthly subscription payment 200 euros or $222, for three years.
Pepper claims to be an emotional companion. It translates what state you are in via knowledge of universal emotions such as joy, surprise, anger, doubt and sadness. It can guess your mood and consequently adapt to it.
Apart from adapting to emotions, Pepper is also an interactive and evolutionary companion. Through interaction, it gains knowledge about your preferences and will use this information to search for applications to help and entertain you.
Aldebaran envisions the creation of robots to support humans. "The ultimate goal is for Pepper to live with humans, the stores are just the beginning," reads the information on Pepper on the company's website.
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