Meet the robot that understands human emotion

Japanese telecoms company, Softbank, will be releasing an emotionally aware robot next February. The robot is called ‘Pepper' and will cost less than $2000 on release, company CEO, Masayoshi Son, announced at a presentation. Pepper uses technology acquired from the French robotics company, Aldebaran.

You may have heard of Aldbebaran before, its the same company that developed the Nao humanoid robots that have been around for the last few years. Aldebaran CEO, Bruno Maisonnier, has praised Masayoshi Son for recognising the importance of robotic technology and how robots understanding human emotions will change the way we communicate and bring them one step closer to being used in every day life.

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Pepper will début at two Japanese stores as customer service representatives and will continue to be available for businesses. However, next year Pepper will be released to the public and will begin integrating in every day life.

The new robot can communicate through emotion, speech and body language- it comes equipped with two microphones and proximity sensors. Owners will be able to upgrade Pepper's functionality with new apps and updates, It already understands 4,500 Japanese words but it can also recognise tone of voice and realise how the user is feeling.

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KitGuru Says: Pepper is supposedly the start of the robot revolution so we might end up seeing more stuff like this over the next few years. Pepper is a Japanese exclusive for now but it might not be long before we similar robots come to market in other parts of the world. Would you guys like to have a robot? I wouldn't mind having one to clean the house for me …

Source: Engadget

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