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Soft Bank's Pepper Robot Sold At A Loss


Tinplate6

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I just pulled this off the net...

SoftBank’s emotion sensing robot Pepper will be sold at a loss

SoftBank unveiled its “emotionally aware” robot Pepper last summer. Now the device is finally going on sale for over $9,000 – less than it costs to build.

The first production run of 300 robots will be available from Friday, with the company hoping developers will build apps for the automaton. The company has said that there will be approximately 100 apps available for Pepper when it launches on Friday.

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Rather than selling Pepper for a standalone fee, the network is offering a payment scheme. Buyers will be asked for $1,660 up front and $206 a month for three years. The subscription will give them access to Softbank’s cloud-based artificial intelligence software and insure their robot against damage.

Softbank claims Pepper is able to understand people’s emotions by using voice and face recognition to detect tone of voice and facial expressions.

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SoftBank is putting Pepper to duty right away, the robot will be deployed at two of the operator’s stores in Tokyo from tomorrow. However, it won’t go on sale to consumers until February 2015. Interestingly, founder Masayoshi Son says Pepper units will be priced at 198,000 yen — which is just over $1,900 — to keep them on a par with the cost of buying a computer. :biggrin:

Softbank will open up the platform to developers later this year when an SDK is released at a developer conference in September.

This cost is about the same as buying a Metal House Prototype Robot WOW. :biggrin:

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