POMONA, California — Pepper is one sweet-hearted robot – if you consider silicon, metal and plastic a heart.
A year ago, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, introduced Pepper to the world. The cloud-based, emotion-sensing humanoid robot was equal parts extraordinary and creepy. Since then, Softbank acquired Pepper’s developer, Aldebaran, ousted the company’s CEO and founder Bruno Maisonnier and basically stopped talking about when the Pepper would arrive in the U.S.
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The robot is still not officially for sale, but there were, to my astonishment, three (!) working Peppers at the DARPA Robotics Challenge robot Expo in Pomona, California. Robot Challenge competitors have to complete eight disaster scenario tasks in under an hour at the Fairplex fairgrounds in Pomona. Pepper is not competing.
Pepper Robot 3
Three Pepper Robots at the DARPA Robotics Challenge
IMAGE: MASHABLE, LANCE ULANOFF
I found the intentionally cute-looking robots early Saturday morning, sitting in a nondescript tent outside the Fairgrounds, all apparently in sleep mode. James Dietrich, Aldebaran’s strategic partnership developer program manager for the Americas, was sitting just behind the robots. I was incredulous.
“It’s Pepper!” I exclaimed.
Dietrich smiled back at me and said, “Yes, it is.”
“This is the first time they’re in the U.S.,” I added.
Dietrich considered this, looked at the sleeping robots and then at me, “Yes, I guess it is.”
One by one, the robots slowly started to wake up.