Pepper Robot Serves Customers At Softbank Store

Are you all right if there is no human touch whenever you are out shopping, or you prefer to be left alone by the salespeople and approach them only if you have to? Perhaps distancing yourself from other homo sapiens might be your style, and if that is the case, then you would surely enjoy spending time over at the Softbank store in Japan. This is because the latest Softbank store in the Land of the Rising Sun will see the Pepper robot, and not humans, serve you.

The Japan-based telecom behemoth announced earlier today that they will want to roll out a public-facing cellphone store that will have its staff made up mostly of Pepper robots, although there will be just a handful of humans who will need to be there as robot helpers. Talk about a role reversal!

Expect to check out this Pepper robot-staffed Softbank store at Tokyo’s Omotesando luxury shopping strip, where there will be anywhere from five to six Pepper robots working in order to assist customers who are mulling over their next smartphone purchase and accompanying SoftBank wireless service. The presence of humans would be to assist the customer in the identity verification process, that’s all. If you would like to rent one of these Pepper robots, you can also do so for $440 a month. It would be cool should these Pepper robots were multi-lingual though!

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: pepper, softbank