PEPPER BOT

By Reema, 1st Year

The Pepper robot is the world’s first social humanoid robot capable of recognizing human faces and emotions. Introducing the first robot with a “heart”, Pepper is optimized for human-computer interaction and can interact with people through chat and touchscreen. Manufactured by SoftBank Robotics, it can read emotions.

It was launched at a launch event on June 5, 2014, and was shown at a SoftBank mobile phone store in Japan the following day. Sensors and equipment used in the robot include NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano development kit, Intel’s RealSense depth camera, and different sensors, motors, and touch screens. The robot can run some of the latest artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms, coupled with Intel’s depth cameras and other sensors, allowing it to perform highly intelligent tasks.

Pepper has two siblings: little Nao is shorter, and big Romeo is taller. As a receptionist in several offices across the UK, Pepper can use facial recognition to identify visitors and send alerts to meeting planners. Pepper can chat with potential customers independently. Japan uses robots in banks and medical institutions. Pepper is used in airports to greet travellers and provide menus and recommendations. A team of Pepper robots serve as cheerleaders at a baseball game between the Fukuoka SoftBank Eagles and the Rakuten Eagles, supported by a team of Boston Dynamics Spot quadruped robots. Pepper can be used as a research and teaching robot in schools, colleges and universities to teach programming and conduct research on human-computer interaction. It is not intended that Pepper will be a functional robot for use in the home. Instead, Pepper stands for “allowing people to enjoy life”, improving people’s lives, fostering relationships, having fun with people, and connecting people with the outside world. a

The creators of Pepper hope that people will create new content and use Pepper soon. Pepper is not only known for his interactivity but also for his great sense of humour.

At Pepper’s launch event, SoftBank CEO’s son, Masayoshi asked the robot to describe some of its functions, and Pepper replied, “Masa, I don’t mean to brag, it may take more than 100 hours”.

Pepper went on sale in June 2015, and the first batch of 1,000 sold out in just 60 seconds. Pepper production ceased in June 2021 due to low demand. Hopefully, it re-enters the market and is a great help to us and everyone around us.