Pepper Humanoid Robot

Pepper is a humanoid robot manufactured by SoftBank Robotics.

The robot was officially introduced in June 2014. An apparatus 120 cm tall on a wheeled platform is capable of performing a variety of everyday tasks and functions, from a home assistant to a room watchdog.

A feature of the robot is its ability to recognize human emotions. Pepper can also learn new actions on its own through simple communication with a person in a real environment.

Thanks to machine learning and advanced AI, the robot learns and remembers the behavior of people, adding to its knowledge base in the cloud storage system.^[1]

Robotics

2021: Suspension of production of Pepper robot

At the end of June 2021, it became known that SoftBank was restructuring its robotics business SoftBank Robotics. The company has already suspended the production of its Pepper robot, which is a competitor to the Russian Promobot.

According to The Verge, SoftBank Robotics plans to fire about half of its 330-person team based in France, where robotics production initially concentrated, and apparently half of the sales team in the UK and the US. By June 2021, consideration of this issue is ongoing, and the company's official statement says that it is considering the possibility of implementing a plan to significantly optimize the number of employees, but plans to continue developing its Pepper business.

SoftBank Robotics suspended production of Pepper robot

According to sources familiar with the situations quoted by Reuters, the production of Pepper robots was stopped in 2020, and the resumption of production will be expensive. The SoftBank only commented that SoftBank Robotics is restructuring.

Reuters is closely following the sale of SoftBank controlling stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai. It seems that management is thinking about what the robotics business will be specifically focused on. Most likely, the application of the company's developments will be more practical, for example, proposals like a carpet cleaning robot called Whiz will appear.

The Pepper robot went on sale in 2015 and is the hallmark of the Japanese company. Initially, it was assumed that it would be used in reception companies and at commercial facilities. Pepper is trained to recognize and respond to basic human emotions. The Japanese company retains access to robotics and automation solutions, owning SB Logistics and a stake in the robotics company Berkshire Gray and the warehouse robotics company AutoStore.^[2]

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