Meet Pepper, The Home Robot

Japanese telecom giant Softbank has unveiled its latest product – Pepper, a robot that can read human emotions.

Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s chief executive, believes we’re on the edge of a major breakthrough in home-based robots.

Standing at 4 ft tall and weighing in at 61 pounds, Pepper was built in partnership with Aldebaran Robotics SAS and is designed to be an ‘affectionate’ consumer automation.

Pepper can communicate with people through a mix of speech, body language and emotion. Pepper features touch sensors on its hands and head, as well as a 10-inch tablet-like screen attached to its chest. It can roll about on three wheels at up to 2 miles per hour, and is Wi-Fi-enabled; its sonar, laser and bumper sensors in its base let it autonomously navigate its environment. It can also operate for 12 hours on a single charge.

At the heart of Pepper’s cognitive powers will be an “emotional engine” and cloud-based artificial intelligence. The emotional engine – face and voice recognition, will help Pepper read a situation.

Softbank has plans to offer hardware upgrades and new apps for Pepper.

The robots will debut at Softbank’s stores in a customer service role. The network is also planning on putting them on sale later this year for around $2,000.

Source: Mashable, T3