Behind the pepper robot, Sun's righteous feelings and dreams

Oldbaren Robotics research company in two years to finally secretly research and development of the successful humanoid robot Pepper, now Japan telecom giant SoftBank Company is ready to sell Pepper to Japanese consumers next year!

Pepper robot seems to want to win everyone a happy, it asked "You are from the heart of the smile?" The other man couldn't help but laugh aloud. Pepper raised his voice and released a punch line, "You see, sure!" "pepper thought he was not polite, so he bent his plastic head and apologized," I'm not doing too much for our chief executive. " 」

Opposite Pepper, the chief executive is son, founder and president of Japan's telecoms giant SoftBank Corp. He foresaw the development of many new products and integrated them into mobile phone operators, internet joint ventures and media companies, successfully creating a huge business complex. This June. Son a humanoid robot project called Pepper at a news conference in Tokyo. Pepper's positioning is the future of home partners, can be said to be the world's first sale to consumers of full-size humanoid robot products. SoftBank plans to officially sell Pepper robots in Japan next February, priced at 198,000 yen (less than 2000 dollars, including monthly fees). Foxconn, the world's largest foundry factory that produced IPhones and IPads, will produce Pepper robots. For less than 2000 dollars, do not bring the Pepper robot to be compared to the Nanny Robot Rosie (Rosie) in the 1962 Rage animated "Jason Family" (The Jetsons). Pepper this 1.2-meter-tall robot has only two hands, no legs, and moves on the bottom of the wheel. Although Pepper can dance and put on some graceful dancing, its ability to operate is very limited. The actions Pepper at the press conference were clearly programmed beforehand, and Pepper did not help consumers fold their clothes and clean up the table.

This is nothing to soft silver, after all, Pepper in the design of the positioning is not a practical automation robot. Pepper's positioning is simply to accompany humans, such as joking, playing games, talking about new exotic things, helping users connect with family and friends or, as the user cooks, reading recipes aloud. In the interactive exhibition with Sun Justice, Pepper not only Japanese, but also to everyone show a fluent English, French and Spanish.

Pepper robot is able to communicate well with people because of its built-in "affective engine", which can read and analyze human facial expressions, voice tone, speech content to judge the current mood of the user, so that the Pepper robot can be flexible to respond. If the owner returns home with a face of frustration, the Pepper robot will play the favorite song for the owner. As son said in a press conference, "Our Pepper robots are to make users feel happier and to minimize sadness." 」

SoftBank is betting on the demand of the consumer's companion robot. Humanoid robots have been a popular imagination in the last century, but they are still far from the common People's home. Today's home robots are basically small robotic toys or wolfrum vacuum cleaners. It is still too early to judge whether Pepper robots can make a sensational success, but the presence of Pepper robots can at least reflect the current robotics technology that is starting to connect with science fiction.

It is not difficult to understand the starting place for a Pepper robot to choose Japan, a country with a very robotic complex. But the combination of SoftBank and the Oldbaren, a French unknown small company, is confusing, as it is incomprehensible that Honda, Sony, Toyota or other big Japanese companies with rich robotics resources are not joining the program.

Oldbaren is headquartered in a modern-looking building on a small street in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. The parts of a half man and a half machine are randomly placed, making people feel more like a scene in Star Wars. A Pepper robot next to the coffee machine is greeting the staff, while another Pepper robot in the golden hair is watching the people in the corridor, an upgraded version of the Pepper robot. In a glass room, more than 10 Pepper robots are talking or walking aimlessly, apparently testing the durability of the robot.

I went into one of the Pepper robots and asked, but the robot didn't understand what I was saying. An employee came up and told the robot to speak English. Now the Pepper robot and the author are basically able to communicate. When the author asked what it could do, the Pepper robot answered with a description of what kind of game he wanted to play. So the staff at the side told me to improve the basic skills of interacting with the robot, such as the need to look at the Pepper robot face and articulate clearly enough in communication. As a result, the author asked again, the Pepper robot replied, "I can do a lot of things because the engineers who are programming for me are very clever." 」

The current market price comparison of mainstream robots (Wolfrum vacuum cleaner robot price of 700 U.S. dollars, Pepper robot price of 2000 U.S. dollars and PR2 robot price of up to 400,000 U.S. dollars)

A single function robot such as Rumba is becoming popular (not expensive, ordinary consumers can afford it, but advanced robots such as PR2, which are built on multi-purpose robotic platforms, such as the laundry stack and the tea-handing water, are much more expensive, and only universities and some research institutions can afford it.

Four years ago son wanted to add robotics to his all-encompassing business empire, and he let his emissaries assess the world's top robotics companies. France's Oldbaren company, although small in size, but in the robot and human interaction experience with outstanding design and development capabilities. Oldbaren's flagship robotic product, Nao, has a 6000 worldwide sales of humanoid robots, now widely used in laboratories, schools and hospitals in more than 70 countries around the world. In the long run, Oldbaren is developing a Romeo humanoid robot with a height of 1.4 meters.

Photo: Bruno Messonnieres, founder and chief executive officer of the French Oldbaren robotics company. Committed to creating a friendly home-type companion robot product for human beings

"I think the most important responsibility of robots is human emotional partners, improving the quality of our daily lives, bringing joy, surprises and helping us grow," says Bruno Messonnieres Bruno Maisonnier. Messonnieres had previously held a managerial position in a financial firm, but had abandoned the golden collar job in pursuit of the dream of making robots for all mankind. Son and Messonnieres met, found that both sides in the "free robot from the laboratory to bring thousands of families," the point of view is very consistent. The two sides may be able to make a world-changing robot product. In early 2012, SoftBank acquired a 78.5% per cent stake in the Oldbaren robotics company and agreed to finance the latter's development of the robotics industry. For Oldbaren Robotics, the company was able to concentrate on the Pepper robot program overnight after the majority of its shares were acquired. But SoftBank gave only three months to build the first product prototype, and then asked to see a robot product demo every months. The strategy of Oldbaren is to develop an enlarged version of humanoid robot based on the experience of design and development of Nao robot.

"Our engineers are applying the linkage mechanism scheme in the Nao robot project to the Pepper project, and there are many other technical solutions that are contributing, otherwise it will be difficult to Oldbaren the robot project within the time required," Rudolph Green, director of research and development at Rodolphe Gelin. 」

The designers and artists team designed a sleek, sleek, beautiful robotic enclosure. The team of engineers will need to cram 20 electric motors in this limited body space, a computer system based on Intel Atom, two cameras, a 3D sensor, four microphones and a lithium-ion battery, and will need to ensure that the robot has a 12-hour duration. The robot has a display on its chest, which is another way for people to interact with each other.

Gwenner Guettes, the director of Robotics software, says the biggest challenge is to meet the needs of the robot's own huge computational requirements, otherwise the processor burns down. Every function of a robot is controlled by 20 software engines. If you are far away from the robot, the robot's built-in sensing engine allows the robot to move its head and make sounds to get the attention of the user. If you go into a robot, the robot's built-in conversation engine starts, so the Pepper robot's "Chatterbox" opens. If the user asks the robot to dance, the built-in motion engine gets the control of the robot, and the complex movements of the limbs are coordinated by the engine.

Oldbaren's engineers blew it up. In April 2012, on behalf of the company for the first time to soft silver in Tokyo's headquarters office to show the prototype of the scene, when the entire room was stuffed with soft silver Japanese top, suddenly opened the door, everyone quiet down. Son walked into the room and stared at the prototype of the Pepper robot in front of him, although the original prototype was extremely simple, but when the engineer turned on the power of the robot, Pepper immediately jumped a short dance. Son's expression and reaction were as pleasant as a child's.

The next two years were more stressful, with engineers abandoning all weekend vacations and statutory holidays and busy at the office day and night. Engineers dubbed the work of the period "Oldbaren sleepless nights". At that time, the company's personnel had once expanded to 500 people, the office expanded to Tokyo, Boston and Shanghai. Pepper's research and development began with an endless array of research and development demonstrations and finally son an Apple-style product presentation Conference in Tokyo. For the launch, Oldbaren and SoftBank spent one months preparing for the rehearsal, and even hired son and Messonnieres in preparation. The degree of attention can be seen.

Son in the conference focused on the Pepper robot's emotional engine, the robot through the visual system to detect human smiles, frowns and surprises. Speech recognition systems are used to identify human voice tones and specific expressions of strong human feelings, such as "Love" and "hate". The emotional engine then quantifies the above series of facial expressions, voice tones and special words, and ultimately makes judgments about positive or negative emotions in humans through quantitative scoring.

The Oldbaren robotics company admits the system is not very complex, but promises to keep improving the system. In the future, hopefully the emotional engine system will also incorporate ethical, emotional resonance, character quality, and behavioral behavior into quantitative analysis, which will help robots integrate into family life and become one of the members. Since the affective engine defines the quality attributes and behavior patterns of the robot, Messonnieres wants to embed the emotional engine into the core, humanoid robot operating system.

Not everyone wants to buy a home companion robot like Pepper, unless it can do some real chores. Robot industry watchers believe that it will take a hard time for Pepper to become a viable robotic product. Some other industry analysts have accused SoftBank of exaggerating the performance of Pepper robots. The famous technology website Verge found that Pepper robot's emotion recognition ability is disappointing.

The soft silver response says the Pepper robot's price is attractive, helping to boost consumers ' willingness to buy. In fact, son has also said that in Pepper robots before mass production can accept a loss of sales Pepper thereby gaining more consumer favor. In fact, this recruit son in the mobile field. In fact, how many consumers will accept this less practical Pepper robot, especially outside the Japanese region of consumers. SoftBank has not yet started making plans for an international marketing of Pepper robots.

Messonnieres says that as developers develop new applications for robots, the functionality of Pepper robots will be enriched. Users can download and install new feature apps, just like installing apps for smartphones. The most important point is to create a huge robot application development community environment, strong application development ability to help consumers scramble to buy the wave of robots, this is like the smart phone buying wave in the past few years.

This September SoftBank joined hands with Oldbaren robotics company in Tokyo to host a developer conference. At the conference, SoftBank disclosed the technical details of the Pepper robot to the developer and launched a series of software development tools. It is understood that 1000 of the developers present in the Conference, there are 600 of the scheduled Pepper robot.

At the same time, Oldbaren Robotics company is constantly improving the current product, hoping to make the Pepper robot more intelligent, more functional. Messonnieres that the advent of Pepper robots has opened the way to a revolution in robotics and popularization, a process that is as powerful and unstoppable as the changes and popularity of PCs, the Internet and mobile technology. People need robots and are disappointed because there are no robotic products. Our Oldbaren robotics Company will create a robot product that everyone expects and waits for.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)