(E) Charismatic Aldebaran’s CEO Bruno Maisonniers recently launched his latest humanoid robot: Pepper. Pepper was designed for the Japanese market, and for Aldebaran’s owner Softbank. Pepper wants to be first and foremost like humans in its ability to feel and convey emotions.

Standing 4 feet tall and weighing about 60 pounds, with a 10” touch tablet on its chest, Pepper is a little bit larger than Nao but using an omnidirectional drive base rather than walking “legs” to move around.

Pepper can feel human emotions (joy, sadness, anger, surprise, and doubt) by analyzing, as humans do, facial expressions, body languages, and voice tones.

Pepper also can express his emotions conveyed by his body language, his funny gestures, and his voice.

As it is the case for Nao, Pepper will grow empowered by new apps by providing development tools to worldwide developers. But Pepper will be connected to the Internet which is not the case for Nao.

The best thing about Pepper is its price: $2,000 while Nao is now selling at $8,000.

Since Pepper is mostly for the Japanese market and does not have legs as does Nao, I am still waiting for Remo and in the meantime being amused by Nao.

Pepper’s Brain and Body:

More than 40 innovative patents
A 3D camera to perceive his surroundings and human activity up to 10 feet (3 m)
He weighs around 61 lbs (28 kg) and is almost 4 feet (120 cm) of pure style;
17 anti-pinch articulations that give him graceful and fluid movements
3 omnidirectional wheels allow him to move around freely
14 hours of battery life

Note: The picture above is from Pepper.

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