Japanese multinational telecommunications and internet corporation SoftBank announced their humanoid robot, Pepper, will now be available to corporate customers in Taiwan through the Foxconn Technology Group subsidiary Perobot.
In June of last year, SoftBank’s native country Japan was the first to offer the cute AI-equipped robot to consumers at $1,600—a price tag that does not completely cover Pepper’s production cost. However, SoftBank believes cloud subscriptions and maintenance fees (at $200 a month) would cover the difference.
Pepper, “the world's first personal robot that reads emotions” who was also recently hired by Pizza Hut, offers high-level human interaction with a complex voice recognition mechanism and the ability to learn from interactions.
SoftBank said developer models of Pepper were to be available for pre-order in the US in July this year, but we are close to the end of the month and that still hasn’t happened. Hopefully, it is just a minor delay and US customers will get a chance to hang out with Pepper soon.
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