SoftBank sells 300 sets of pepper to developers

Absrtact: SoftBank showed the humanoid robot pepper last June, when the estimated price was about 2000 dollars. But the real price may be lower. According to WSJ News, SoftBank will sell 300 sets of pepper to developers in Friday 10 o'clock in the morning, with a sale price of 1

SoftBank showed the humanoid robot pepper last June, when it was estimated to sell at around 2000 dollars. But the real price may be lower.

According to WSJ News, SoftBank will sell 300 sets of pepper to developers in Friday 10 o'clock in the morning, with a sale price of 198,000 yen (about 1660 US dollars). But with cloud services, warranty, insurance and other late service costs, pepper price is not expensive. In installments, the 3-year payment is 24,600 yen (about $207, totaling about 7448 dollars) per month. Tokyo Shibuya's "soft silver Omotesando Shop" will also sell 30 units. The news also revealed that it was likely to adopt this price standard when it was sold to consumers this summer.

Pepper first appearance in this period of time, only in two soft silver Direct shop did a simple customer service work. But SoftBank will show some of its apps at the Friday launch to encourage developers to develop more third-party apps like smartphone apps.

Pepper was developed by the French robotics company Aldebaran Robotics, assembled by Foxconn. SoftBank bought a portion of Aldebaran robotics in 2012, a company that previously produced programmable commercial robot Nao. In terms of appearance, pepper the Spirit of "Astro" (son previously said Pepper's idea originated from the cartoon "Astro Boy"); function, pepper through the sensor perception of human emotions, with expression, action, language and human communication, Exchange can change intonation.

Last July, SoftBank set up its subsidiary, the soft Silver robot, which specializes in the development and sales of pepper. Currently, SoftBank has developed an operating system that is similar to the Android operating system, which can be tailored to the needs of the customer's industry. Soft silver hope that through this move, not only let pepper into ordinary families, more can impress the heart of enterprise consumers.

Soft silver in recent years in the field of intelligent robot movement, a big reason is that Japan has become one of the fastest aging countries in the world, intelligent robots have great market potential. The data show that the total size of the robot market in Japan for 2012 years is about 8.38 billion dollars. The Japanese government predicts that the Android market will reach $24 billion trillion by 2022.

In addition to SoftBank, Google has entered the robotics field by acquiring companies such as Schaft, Honda has developed humanoid robot Amossi (Asimo), Panasonic has developed robot Hospi-r to deliver drugs to patients in hospitals, and Tokyo University has developed Robi with Toyota.