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posted by LaminatorX on Monday June 22 2015, @04:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-grinder dept.

A story from ITWorld:

In Japan, a new robot - the Pepper Robot - went on sale on Saturday (20 Jun), but the demand was a bit more than they expected:

The mobile carrier said 1,000 units of the household robot sold out in one minute on Saturday, its first day of consumer sales. The humanoid machine is designed to be a personal robot and a member of the family. It can’t do housework, but it can converse, recognize people’s emotions, develop its own “feelings” and retrieve information from the Internet such as messages and weather forecasts. SoftBank describes Pepper as the world’s first personal robot that has its own emotions.

Most of the Peppers were purchased online Saturday, but 30 units were ordered through a drawing held Friday at a SoftBank shop in Tokyo. No information about the first buyers was available, a SoftBank spokesman said.

The company plans to make more Peppers available in July.

Designed by SoftBank group company Aldebaran Robotics of France, Pepper has a raft of sensors and cloud-based artificial intelligence chops. It’s cheap compared to other robots of comparable sophistication, but it’s still a major purchase—it costs ¥198,000 (US$1,600) plus ¥24,600 in monthly data and insurance fees.


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  • (Score: 2) by TK on Monday June 22 2015, @01:56PM

    by TK (2760) on Monday June 22 2015, @01:56PM (#199408)

    If someone out there sells a VLM-bot do I get a cut of the revenue?

    Any percentage of $0 is still $0.

    I don't think it will ever be scandalous to bang your robot built for banging. Banging The Help can result in pregnancy or gossip, both of which can sully your reputation as a dignified, respectable land-holding owner of people. Banging your sister can result in freak babies.

    Banging the bang-bot, on the other hand, just results in a mess that's easily removed from the detachable orifice of choice.

    If you bang the robot that was built to take care of your kids, then it's weird. Those silicone milk dispensers weren't designed for what you're using them for.

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