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Humanoid Robots to Arrive on Store Shelves Next Year
The advance of robotics in recent years has been incredible and is now about to enter a new era, according to reports. Indeed, “humanoid” types of robots are expected to hit American retailers sometime next year.
Bloomberg News reports that billionaire Masayoshi Son will begin selling a kind of humanoid robot named “Pepper” by summer 2015 at Sprint Corp. stories in the United States, which is part of a push by SoftBank Corp. to move the technology beyond the factory.
In addition, SoftBank says it has received nearly 400 inquiries about its humanoid robot from companies in finance, food service and education, said Fumihide Tomizawa, chief executive officer of SoftBank Robotics, in an interview with Bloomberg News.
The 1.2-meter (4-foot) robot “dances, makes jokes and estimates human emotions based on expressions,” the news service reported.
Pepper will be on sale in Japan in February for about $1,900; the company has yet to set a price for it in the U.S.
‘We want to build a society that coexists with robots’
Last year, SoftBank paid $22 billion for control of Sprint; now, the company has begun to invest in robotics as Japan looks to double the value of its current domestic production to 2.41 trillion yen ($22.9 billion) by 2020. The company has developed an operating system that can control robots much the same as Google’s Android software can run a smartphone. Its platform is able to be customized so it can be used in a range of industries including construction, healthcare and entertainment.
“We will sell Pepper in the United States within a year after gathering information in Japan,” Tomizawa told Bloomberg News. “I won’t be surprised if Pepper sales will be half to business and half to consumers.”
In July, SoftBank Robotics was launched as a subsidiary to direct the company’s business and begin selling Pepper; the robot comes equipped with a laser sensor and a battery that can last up to 12 hours. As further reported by Bloomberg News:
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/09/humanoid-robots-to-arrive-on-store-shelves-next-year/
