Softbank Robotics: Pepper

Standing at 4-feet high Pepper is quite childlike. This model was greeting customers at the entrance to a Softbank shop along a very busy shopping arcade in Osaka. A few of fingers on her left hand were broken. Their strings left snapped and hanging; likely by an overly enthusiastic child.

The touch screen made it simple to choose topics of conversation. While not perfect with conversation, Pepper remembered faces and some past conversation topics. At this point its not the hardware, its the cloud that needs to catch up.

I imagine that is why Pepper's are placed in Softbank shops across Japan, to learn. To improve Softbanks machine learning algorithm. You are looking at the future of the service industry. A hive mind. Plug and play. No training necessary.

As John Conner said to the T-800 in Terminator II: "No, no, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk."

Turns out the robots aren't coming for us. They're just coming for our jobs.

Osaka, Japan