Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Pepper, a new humanoid robot introduced earlier this month in Japan, may herald the beginning of a new era in personal robotics. Unlike its ancestors, such as Mitsubishi’s Wakamaru and Sony’s QRIO, who had to join the halls of robot extinction, Pepper, developed jointly by the French robotics company Aldebaran and the Japanese telecom giant SoftBank, is here to stay.

Although the robot aims at possibly the most unreachable market in robotics industry, that of personal household robots, there are several major factors that can play a decisive role in Pepper’s future: his advanced emotional intelligence, surprisingly low price, and, of course, let’s not forget that looks matter – Pepper’s design is every bit gorgeous.

Softbank plans to start selling the robots next year in Japan for about $ 1,900. Until then, people can get acquainted with Pepper at certain SoftBank stores in Japan.

Although Pepper might initially seem quite unpractical – it will not clean your house and may not even be able to effectively fetch things – the robot’s strong suit lies in its ability to be good company.

Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Pepper’s communication skills are the result of special software that allows it to effectively analyze human emotions by combining information about voice tone, facial expressions and body language. In this way Pepper will tailor each individual conversation based on how its interlocutors feel and behave. While by no means the first robot to do so, Pepper may well be the first consumer available robot with such advanced emotion-reading capabilities.

The cutting-edge emotion engine will be supported by a cloud-based “collective wisdom”, where all Pepper robots will be able to upload valuable information about their interactions with humans. Taken together, this data will allow them evolve and polish their communication skills. As an example, hundreds of robots could store information about whether a particular joke makes people laugh, and then decide whether the same joke will be appropriate in other situations.

Pepper’s emotional intelligence is a logical progression of Aldebaran’s pursuit of companion robots capable of living with humans and responding to their constantly changing moods and feelings. The robot is strongly reminiscent of Aldebaran’s previous hit Nao, but, unlike his little brother, uses wheels instead of legs to move around – a choice dictated by power efficiency requirements.

A legged version of Pepper, however, might also see the light: Aldebaran’s legged Romeo robot, which still remains in development, can in the future serve as a foundation for a legged version of Pepper. You can read a previous post to learn more about the ongoing Romeo project.

Allowing robots to understand human emotions and express their own is a critical step towards improving human robot interaction in all settings. Read this post to learn about some ongoing European projects that aim to improve emotional intelligence in robots.

Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Five years have passed since Aldebaran Robotics announced an ambitious joint project with over a dozen leading French research centres to make France one of the few countries to have developed an advanced humanoid robot. Finally, the robot, named Romeo, made its long-awaited debut at the Innorobo robotics fair, which was held earlier last month in Lyon.

Aldebaran Robotics hit the big time with its famed Nao robot, which immediately conquered the love of the robotics community, and it was only a question of time before Aldebaran would face the challenge of creating a larger and more capable robot. Romeo, who stands 1,40 meters tall and weighs around 40 kg, however, is not just an enlarged version of Nao and, although not without some synergy between the two projects, the researches had to develop in many ways a very different humanoid.

Romeo was conceived as a personal assistant to elderly and disabled people and will have to move in an everyday environment and, in theory, perform such tasks as fetching objects, take out the trash and monitor the owner’s health, mood and behaviour.

Safety was a major concern when designing the physical platform, for a bigger robot implies bigger risks, and so Aldebaran set about developing a robot that neither looks dangerous, nor is a danger. In this regard, the project has made some important advances: unlike most humanoids, which rely on gears to power their joints, Romeo’s joints – and most importantly leg joints – are based on a very light and low-friction backdrivable mechanism consisting of screws and cables, which offers more control over the robot and is considerably safer and cheaper. A good example of a backdrivable robot is the WAM arm from Barrett Technology.

Romeo, of course, still remains in the development stage, which was fairly obvious at Innorobo. So far, the robot seems to have limited mobility and cognitive capabilities, and it might be too early to talk about how Romeo stands up to what was promised at the beginning of the project. Some parts of the robot will be almost definitely improved along the way: Romeo’s hands, for instance, now have four fingers each and just one degree of freedom, which allows him to perform only a basic grasping motion – clearly not enough to perform most of the tasks envisioned for the robot.

Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Aldebaran hopes that Romeo will start working at aged care facilities by the year 2017 or, at the latest, by 2019. And, although it might seem unrealistic – given the rumoured cost of Romeo at around $ 330.000 – Aldebaran has plans for commercialising the robot by offering it to hospitals and nursing homes and eventually to individuals.

For more information on Romeo, you can read this article.