Coming soon and yours for $1900 (£1135): Pepper, the personal robot slave who can read human emotion and act as an all-in-one babysitter, nurse and friend, as sold by Japan’s mobile phones and smartphones giant Softbank.
Softbank, pitching the robot as a solution to labour shortages in a country with a rapidly ageing population, will be using prototypes to serve customers in its mobile phone stores, according to chief executive Masayoshi Son.
“People describe others as being robots because they have no emotions, no heart. For the first time in human history, we’re giving a robot a heart, emotions,” said Son.
They will use cloud computing to share data that can develop their own emotional capabilities.
The robots were developed by French robotics company Aldebaran, in which SoftBank took a stake in 2012. The Japanese government estimates the robotics market could treble to more than $25 billion by 2020.
Pepper is set to go on sale in February 2015. The battery life is 12 hours, so owners will have to put it on charge with their smartphones.
