Pepper Robot Going to Work at Japanese Electronics Store

Softbank's Pepper robot is currently brushing up on its Japanese in order to land a gig as a sales clerk at a major Japanese electronics retailer.

The ¥198,000 ($1,591) machine, currently on sale in Japan, can detect emotions via built-in cameras, touch sensors, an accelerometer, and other senses, and is programmed to react appropriately. According to PC World, it will show off its skills next year at electronics store Yamada Denki.

Pepper began studying Japanese in February, when IBM and SoftBank announced a global alliance aimed at bringing new Watson-powered apps and services to Japan.

"The Japanese language presented IBM researchers with a number of unique challenges to overcome, most notably the first time the Watson system has learned a language that relies on characters not shared by the Western alphabet," IBM Japan general manager Paul Yonamine said in a statement earlier this year.

It seems the team still has some work to be done. Reporting from the SoftBank World conference in Tokyo this week, PC World said Pepper had some difficulties during a demo. The ambient noise of the event often made it difficult for Pepper to understand queries, while it failed to distinguish between candy and a bar of soap.

Practice makes perfect, though, and Pepper's performance improved throughout the day, the site said. IBM told the Tokyo audience that SoftBank's robot simply suffers from a lack of training data in its neural network, which identifies goods by matching their features to descriptions and images in its database.

Unveiled in June 2014, Pepper comes with a 10.1-inch touch display to monitor emotions via changing colors and movements, as well as voice-recognition technology and emotion recognition—enabling human-to-humanoid communication. It also makes gestures like an arm wave or head nod.

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Last month, 1,000 Pepper robots went on sale in Japan, costing ¥198,000, plus a separate "robot charge" of ¥9,800 ($79). An additional 30 units were given away in a SoftBank drawing.

The AP, meanwhile, said Softbank and IBM will share Watson with start-ups and academic institutions in Japan beginning in October. At that point, Softbank will also start leasing Pepper to businesses for about $450 per month, PC World said.