Softbank Corp (SFTBY)

[mick]

The robotics movement lives on!
http://www.marketeyewitness.com/softbank-pepper-robot-is-it-a-game-changer/

Two years ago, the Softbank Pepper Robot was unveiled. It was originally built by a French Robotics company by the name of Aldebaran. Through its emotion engine, this friendly humanoid was designed to understand the feelings of people and to develop the appropriate reactions based on an individual emotion or mood.

In June 2015, the Softbank Pepper Robot went on sale in Japan. It was geared towards enterprise consumers at a cost of $16,000.

The Mizuho Bank has used the Softbank Pepper Robot to provide information to its customers in different languages in different branches within Japan.


In addition, the Softbank Pepper Robot may be at the preliminary stage of taking retail jobs away from the Japanese. Pizza Hut Asia was one of the first entities in Japan to use the Softbank Pepper Robot for customer service. At the moment, the robot is built for customer engagement as well as order-taking. The Softbank Pepper Robot is built to process transactions from beginning to end, including checkout.

Last month, the Softbank Pepper Robot was launched to corporate consumers in Taiwan via Perobot. Perobot is a subsidiary of the FoxConn Technology Group. It should be noted that FoxConn Technology Group teamed up with Alibaba to invest $236 million dollars in Softbank Robotics Holdings.

Two months ago, two hospitals in Belgium have begun to use the Softbank Pepper Robots to assist visitors at the reception desk. This arrangement was designed to enhance the performance of the hospital reception staff. Thanks to a Belgian firm called Zora Bots, the Softbank Pepper Robot is designed to give directions to or walk individuals to their respective doctor rooms for appointments.


For over a year now, Nestle has employed an army of robots to sell coffee machines in its Nescafe stores in Japan. Nestle has plans to put Softbank Pepper Robots in 1000 stores.


The SoftBank Pepper Robot is Coming to North America

Just like Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, the SoftBank Pepper Robot is coming to America. In May, Softbank announced that its Pepper Robot will debut in the North American market later on in the year. The firm has even built a developer portal for any individual that is interested in creating applications for the Softbank Pepper Robot.

In addition, the firm has also introduced a software developing kit for the Android mobile OS on behalf of the Softbank Pepper Robot. Just like Japan, Softbank will approach the North American market by targeting businesses.

A couple of weeks ago, the Softbank Pepper Robot landed in Silicon Valley. For a week, the robot was featured at the B8ta retail store in Palo Alto, California. The robot responded to customer needs and inquiries. The purpose of this demonstration was to get U.S app developers excited about this phenomenon.

Imagine a world in which customer service robots were the norm. The word “new economy” would mean so much more to the average Joe.