Softbank’s Pepper Robot Begins Its Global Journey
Techcrunch announced today that Softbank has begun selling its conversational robot Pepper outside of Japan for the first time. Pepper is now available in Taiwan to enterprise customers. The robot is being distributed by a subsidiary of Foxconn.
According to the Techcrunch article, Foxconn and Alibaba made a $236 investment in Softbank Robotics Holdings. It makes sense, then, that Softbank would tap Foxconn to be the first international distributor of the Pepper robot.
So far Pepper seems to have been used primarily in customer support roles. The robot is working as an automated order taker in select Pizza Huts in the Asia-Pacific region. Pepper has also staffed a phone store and presumably answers customer questions about phones and phone plans.
As with other social robots, Pepper is open to third party developers (or at least that’s Softbank’s clear intent). Softbank announced the open platform at Google’s I/O event back in May.
For developers interested in building applications for Pepper, Softbank has created a developer’s portal filled with lots of useful documentation. Developers in North America and Europe need to decide if it makes sense for them to jump in early and begin building skills for Pepper. What are the prospects for monetization? It still seems to early to say.
