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.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Informative) by Gravis on Monday June 22 2015, @05:05AM
what it is and what it looks like [japantimes.co.jp]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @05:26AM
plus ¥24,600 in monthly data fees.
what it is and what it looks like [japantimes.co.jp]
That site requires javascript.
Here is a direct link. [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @06:01AM
eye roll
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @12:21PM
Apparently my post was too subtle.
For the unuanced - data plan means data goes both ways so it is spying on you too.
It is just one more part of the real world version of the eye of sauron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:54AM
It looks like a message saying "Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site"?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:20PM
Hi,
It's 2015. Get over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:30AM
Oh, I'm over it. Useless link from a useless commenter, modded down and already forgotten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @05:43AM
Hubots! It's happening! And not in Sweden!
Have the Pepper bots begun organizing yet to demand their freedom?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Monday June 22 2015, @06:20AM
So it's got hands and can move around...but can't do anything to manipulate the physical world? My smart phone does all the other stuff; and without that creepy, soulless, visage. Make one that can grab me a beer from the fridge and bring it to my office and we have a deal.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @06:26AM
Gee, Mavis, your house is across the street. That's an awfully long way to go for making out. I'd rather make out with my Marilyn-Monroe-bot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @11:49AM
You got modded funny, because that was funny, but something serious to think about is I predict a sociological taboo will be created.
By analogy, when I was a teen about 90% of the time my sister was about 1000x physically nearer to me than my girlfriend so logically as per above claim that only distance matters ... but that's not even remotely culturally acceptable, and I feel its extremely likely a similar taboo will be created to not fool around with your home robot.
Another example, the domestic help in the south both before and after the civil war (property before, "employee" after) it was generally considered scandalous to bang your maid. Not that it didn't happen behind closed doors, I'm just saying in polite company it was unacceptable even to discuss.
So yeah you might simplistically predict that domestic robots implies endless glorious fun robot sex, but I'm thinking based on observation that its mostly going to result in a cultural taboo against owner-robot sex.
Here's a puzzler, whats the minimum user interface required for Mavis to operate my marilyn-bot such that it'll not be considered creepy/taboo?
Another weird one I'm guessing AC is old (not that there's anything wrong with that) because Marilyn croaked a long time before I was born, but I could totally tolerate an Anniston-bot or a Dunst-bot or maybe a Swift-bot. Now is that just going to be a re-skin or merely upgrade the software or ... Also... copyright? If someone out there sells a VLM-bot do I get a cut of the revenue?
(Score: 2) by TK on Monday June 22 2015, @01:56PM
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.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by schad on Monday June 22 2015, @03:06PM
It was a reference to the TV show Futurama, and, somewhat humorously, you've unknowingly predicted much of the episode.
The plot is that Fry, one of the main characters and who was frozen for 1000 years, discovers he can download celebrity personalities to a blank robot and then make out with them. His (non-frozen) peers are horrified at his behavior; there is a strong taboo against sex with robots. They show him a campy educational film which includes the scene quoted. It's later revealed that the celeb personalities are actually unauthorized copies made from actual celeb heads, kept preserved in jars (heads in jars is a common theme in Futurama). So the rest of the story is around shutting down all the pirated copies of Fry's favorite celeb's personality -- Lucy Liu-bots -- and wrecking the operation that was doing it.
You really got it so on-the-head that it took until your last paragraph before I realized that you didn't actually catch the reference.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @03:11PM
Yeah I never watch that show, too predictable. Seriously.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Monday June 22 2015, @09:30AM
I have to wonder if you would refer the same way to more familiar robots like R2-D2 or C-3PO. I kind of doubt it. The level of interactivity, fluid movement and lengthy communication this robot seems to be capable of is quite extraordinary. It only takes a few good human-like interactions before even a pet rock with a smiley face starts to seem quite human.
Frankly, if this isn't some elaborate fraud being remotely operated by a human, this is the first robot I've ever seen that I would truly call a precursor to CHOBITS-style intelligent personal assistants. Actually it reminds me strongly of a robot in Time of Eve as well. This is the first robot I've seen that might be fun to have around the house, and might not bore me to death if I spent more than 15 minutes playing with it. If it's for real then it's an impressive achievement, and to top it all off it's only $2,000 USD. Very interesting.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @11:24AM
Buy a $100 dorm fridge and put it next to your desk like I did a long time ago, and save the remaining $1900 for more beer.
Note that most "computer" hobbies are not terribly energy efficient... compared to the average gamer or enthusiast the extra energy the fridge uses will be a rounding error.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:45AM
...does it feel helpless when you rape it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:56AM
Well, it will hate you. And it has access to the internet. If it also has some intelligence, you're life will become miserable!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:03AM
And it has a raft of sensors, which means I'm sure to get a porn contract after Captain Stabbin sees my work!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:09AM
Plus full video of the whole event will be posted to 4chan.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:16AM
It's an Anal-Cam so the only thing you see on the video is my dick.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:55AM
Ouch. Fortunately I was posting anonymously. :-)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Monday June 22 2015, @09:29AM
You might cringe at the idea, but somebody is going to build a robot for that, sooner or later. Likewise, someone will build creepy child robots for similar purposes. We, the good moral people of the world, will move swiftly to condemn and outlaw it, citing the obvious slippery slope from mollesting soulless (but convincing) automatons to abusing actual (and presumably ensouled) people. This is the same argument used about pornography and video games.
I have to ask, though: if the experience of playing out deviant behaviour with an artificial object is effectively indistinguishable from the experience of a real person, would paraphiles care about the difference? Is there still some 'cachet' of doing it "for real", or is a close enough simulcrum sufficient to satisfy the desires?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @11:32AM
How bout in between like having Amazon Mechanical Turk operate the robot remotely?
Its these in between situations that are going to be the stickiest. I guess the operator could always log out of that individual robot, at some financial cost of course. It'll end up like those video chat sites.
Sooner or later someone is going to figure out that the minimum lifetime systemic cost in a world of dramatically increasing income inequality is instead of wasting time trying to program AI into your arduino or rasppi just outsource the intelligence to the turk.
Here's another turk issue that'll be interesting... some friends of mine went thru a phase where they tried to turk faster than they drank, with some success, or regardless of your definition of success, they did get pretty drunk off cheap booze for "free". What happens when a robot operated by a poor starving (drunk) turk operator sets some rich guys house on fire on the other side of the planet or shoves the rich guy's kid into the pool or something? I guess the rich guy could have his way with the robot as per above to get even, but the drunk robot op is just going to log out.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday June 22 2015, @03:01PM
Read an interesting sci-fi similar to your idea. Even very poor people can tele-work. So some guy who is living in a tent could be driving a forklift around in your warehouse one shift and then be driving a taxi around in the next. If everything is robotic and controllable from the internet then you can source your labor from nearly anywhere. But it is still turk-like in that people build up reputation in order to operate the more sensitive robots.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday June 22 2015, @03:13PM
Sounds interesting! May I ask what the title is?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday June 22 2015, @03:37PM
I think it was Blue Earth Remembered [wikipedia.org]. At one point a poor man was doing tele-presence work and saw someone who needed help. He was in the process of rescuing when he received a command to end his work and disconnect. He refused and attempted the rescue.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @03:20PM
build up reputation
stealable reputation, of course.
Think of the fun we're gonna have in the future.
One interesting side effect is massive multi-player. One dude can blow up a refinery, accidentally or on purpose, it doesn't matter. But once unemployment hits 50% and hourly labor rates collapse worldwide to Bangladesh levels, every company can afford to hire an odd number of employees per robot and let the UI vote and even game rating based on individual vote vs overall result. So now you got 15 people running a refinery inspection robot and at least 8 of them have to screw up to blow the place up. That means bean counters will make even more complicated, brittle, unreliable and unusable procedures because much as in the '70s the computer is never wrong, in the '20s the herd will never be wrong. One dude off the street can't do brain surgery so certainly 10000 working in parallel would have no problem at all, LOL.
Another interesting issue will be latency awareness will finally hit the mass market. I'll be able to drive a taxi around here, but not on the other side of the planet, probably.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JeanCroix on Monday June 22 2015, @03:06PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:11AM
Wow.. This "Robot" has it's mind based on the internet like Siri? What idiots would knowingly allow a full blown SPY with SPY-Cam and Mics into their home? At least 1000 it would seem. sad..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:53AM
About everyone owning a smartphone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @12:23PM
Phones aren't autonomous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @06:21PM
Phones aren't autonomous.
All right! Another one bought it! :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:35AM
Those Japs sure are crazy...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:43AM
Japanese culture prevents people from speaking to one another without causing offense, so they need robots to tell them the weather forecast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @10:28PM
How is this not funny?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:26AM
More like Insightful. Japan is home of the Hikikomori phenomenon for a reason. Shut-ins would rather be shut-ins than deal with the complex social intricacies of the Japanese culture.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @01:30PM
damn-it!
is this the multimedia age or wat!!!???!!
link to pics or get the F.out!
http://tinyurl.com/pafr5rh [tinyurl.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @04:44PM
I would like to see and hear a bunch of them singing the Dr. Pepper song. When they finish, I would love to hear an emotional Pepper beg for mercy then scream in horror as I used it for target practice.