Friday, June 19,2015 —SoftBank announced that ‘Pepper’, the world’s first personal robot that can read emotions, will go on sale in Japan starting June 20, 2015. The robot, which has no legs and moves on wheels, was shown to reporters and guests at a Tokyo area theater Thursday. It has a hairless head and moving arms and went through a year of software development after first being unvieled last year.
SoftBank, Alibaba and Foxconn will bring SoftBank’s Pepper robot and other robotics businesses to global markets, and cooperate with the aim of spreading and developing the robotics industry on a worldwide scale.
“For the first time, we have successfully given emotion and heart to robots,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son claimed.
“Love is what leads to happiness for all people,” said Masayoshi Son.
SoftBank can make about 1,000 units available for purchase in the month of June, customers will be able to place orders for Pepper online starting from 10:00am on June 20.
Pepper will not only be able to read emotions, it has evolved to have emotions. Pepper’s emotions use emotion functions developed by cocoro SB Corp. that enable robots to artificially generate their own emotions. These emotion functions in Pepper are modeled on the human release of hormones in response to stimuli absorbed by the five senses which in turn generate emotions.
In addition to Pepper’s emotion recognition functions, Pepper has capabilities to generate emotions autonomously by processing information from his cameras, touch sensors, accelerometer and other sensors within his “endocrine-type multi-layer neural network.”
Pepper’s emotions are influenced by people’s facial expressions and words, as well as his surroundings, which in turn affects Pepper’s words and actions. For example, Pepper is at ease when he is around people he knows, happy when he is praised, and gets scared when the lights go down. Depending on the emotion at the time, Pepper raises his voice or sighs, for example. Pepper’s emotions can be seen on the heart display, which shows different colors and movements.
Furthermore, a number of robot apps have been developed to make life fun with an emotional robot. The ‘Pepper’s Diary’, for example, links Pepper’s emotions with daily family events that are recorded with pictures and photos.
With the sales launch, approximately 200 robot apps will be available for download from the app store in addition to the pre-installed basic apps. Special robot apps that can be acquired by using ‘cocorogumi’, which are obtained by spending time with Pepper, will also be available.
The Pepper robot will sell for 198,000 yen ($1,600), SoftBank said in Tokyo on Thursday. The company will also offer a service plan for 14,800 yen a month, which will give users access to cloud-based voice-recognition and an app store.
Last Year, an MIT professor has developed a social robot, Jibo that can act as a personal assistant, speak, learn, and interact with people in a ‘humanized’ fashion. It can communicate in tones and cues closely resembling human interaction. It can take photos and video, and deliver hands-free messages and reminders. It can even read and tell stories.
