Some of you guys might recall that in 2014, Softbank Japan launched a robot called Pepper. The robot then went on sale in Japan this year where apparently it was so popular that it managed to sell out in a minute with 1,000 units of its initial batch finishing in a blink of the eye, and now it looks like the robot has made its way to France.
According to a report from AFP (via CNET), the Pepper robots are expected to be stationed throughout a Carrefour hypermarket in the country’s Claye-Souilly region. They will provide suggestions to customers, like recipe ideas along with wine pairings, and will also be used to help gauge customer satisfaction.
Magali Cubier of Aldebaran Robotics, the company that manufactures the robot, “The main focus is to entertain people and to test how they react to seeing a robot in a shop. It is the first time we are getting Pepper out of Japan, so we will see the reaction of users in France.” It is unclear if the robot will eventually go on sale to the public, but presumably this will depend on how well it is received in the country.
In the meantime, Pepper has yet to launch in the US. Softbank had previously expressed their interest in the US market with a potential launch in 2015, but with the year coming to an end we have yet to hear anything about Pepper arriving stateside.