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Humanoid Robot Arrives In US: SoftBank Personal Robot Release Date & Specs

By George Houston | Update Date: May 19, 2016 06:01 AM EDT

America will finally get to see "Pepper," the loquacious robot that first made an appearance in Japan more or less two years ago. Softbank Robotics America (formerly Aldebaran) made it public this week during the Google I/O that the humanoid machine created by founder and CEO Masayoshi Son will be unveiled later this year along with a declaration that they will be accepting programmers who wished to build applications as a new development portal has been created, according to Spectrum.

"We're so excited to see what the development community can bring on to our platform," said Steve Carlin Vice President of marketing and business development for SoftBank Robotics America as the company wanted to create an impetus prior to Pepper's arrival. 

He enthusiastically added that "ultimately what is going to really power Pepper is the creativity of this community" as Softbank hasn't committed yet on an exact date for an official launching.

Laurent Lenc from Softbank Robotics and Junichi Monma from Google also organized a show and tell presentation that featured Pepper's passage in having an Android SDK main feature. The duo explained that there are dissimilarities between coding for a humanoid and coding for a smartphone.

Initially, Pepper ran on Naoqi, which is a Linux-based operating system made by Aldebaran before the French robotics company was merged with Softbank Robotics.

Pepper was moved up the operating system echelon into a "Google-certified Android OS and released APIs to enhance the developer experience." Carlin pointed it out that the "Android SDK is a layer on top of the Naoqi operating system."

The talkative android is four-foot tall with a child-like upper body and is three-wheel based. It has a tablet in its chest that can be used for assignation and interaction. "Pepper" also has the ability to communicate via speech.

At present, "Pepper" has been serviced by consumers and companies in Japan as SoftBank has released more than 7,000 models. "Pepper" has even been absorbed by such companies as Nestlé, Nissan, and Carrefou as an assistant for its customers.

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