'Pepper' Humanoid Robot that reads your emotions

Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank has launched a humanoid robot "Pepper" with Aldebaran Robotics.

"Pepper" is the world's first personal communication robot that can read emotions, with the ability to analyse people's expressions and voice tones.

It is designed to live with humans.

" 'Pepper' has ability for simple conversations and recognises people's face as he is looking at me now. The biggest feature of Pepper is to read facial expression and has ability to read your emotions by analysing voice tones. It has a feature to interact according to the emotion recognition and changes the way of communications based on the emotions," Shohei Fujiwara, Business Development Division, SoftBank Robotics Corp said.

SoftBank started leasing of an enterprise model of the humanoid robot Pepper, 'Pepper for Biz' in October last year.

Based on the consumer model of Pepper now being sold in Japan, Pepper for Biz is a model that comes with pre-installed applications for use by enterprises, including ones for office reception and approaching potential customers.

Corporate users also benefit from the 'Pepper for Biz Platform', a tool that stores information from customer approaches and other relevant information that can be utilised for marketing purposes.

"Pepper for Biz" is offered at a monthly rental plan of 465 USD a month.

Also, Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Technology Research Institute and Japanese robotics company Kokoro Company Ltd. is developing a humanoid robot with strong visual human-likeness, looks and behaves similar to a young woman.

It is "Actroid" - developed with a concept to make it close to the human beings as possible, using the latest technology.

"Actroid" has silicone skin and just like humans, it has speech recognition software that can talk, make eye contact, and comprehend and accordingly respond to different tone and body language.

"We are deploying Actroids for human work in the future. In last July, Actroids were recruited to The Henn-na Hotel at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki. The trial for humanoid robots as a replacement of human staff work has already started," said Hideaki Sakurai, Robot Technology Sales Department, Kokoro Company Ltd.

Robot technology also helps develop physical ability of human being. It supports disabled person and extends normal people's physical ability.

Every time, every space, every person can enjoy sport. It is the slogan of "Super human sports society", who is trying to create new sport.

This trial aims to obtain beyond physical ability of human being based on human extension engineering. Also it aims to beyond gap derives from handicap of human being. This trial enables to perform sport as a superman for every people.

Association holds workshop aggressively to promote superman's sport.

Superman's sport enables to extend not only physical ability but also field playing sport.

HADO is played equipping wearable device in virtual space.

Head mount display with smart phone reflects virtual target. Player keeps arm band and attack to virtual target. It is the action to cast magic power.

Everyone can play technique of hero in the animation or cartoon. It is enabled by fusion of motion recognition technology and AR technology.

"We aim to export this technology to foreign countries. It is convenient in the theme park or event. We will make progress aggressively. This play is enjoyable for foreigners," Hiroshi Fukuda, CEO, Meleap inc. said.