{"id":28665,"date":"2015-02-23T14:17:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T13:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=28665"},"modified":"2015-02-23T14:17:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T13:17:25","slug":"softbank-ship-first-pepper-robots-developers-friday-1660","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2015\/02\/softbank-ship-first-pepper-robots-developers-friday-1660\/","title":{"rendered":"Softbank to ship first Pepper robots to developers this Friday at $1,660"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"b-pepperdelay-a-20150211-870x577\"
\nThe humanoid robot Pepper will start shipping this Friday,\u00a0the CEO of product-owner Softbank announced this week, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>. The news\u00a0confirms\u00a0what CEO\u00a0Masayoshi Son told reporters earlier this month, namely that Pepper won’t be hitting shelves until this Summer. The company said it will ship 300 units to developers,\u00a0having received much more than the originally planned 200 pre-orders it expected, in order to allow developers to build more apps into the product.<\/p>\n

“[Softbank]\u00a0envisions Pepper as a companion for the elderly, a teacher of schoolchildren and an assistant in retail shops, among other uses. It is one of a number of robotics projects that are aimed at dealing with labor shortages as Japan\u2019s population ages.” – Wall Street Journal<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The product will be sold at with a $1,660 upfront price – much less than the production cost of the device – however, it will also carry a mandatory $206\/month service charge for the cloud-based artificial intelligence, repairs & more, with a\u00a0commitment of three years. This totals the cost of Pepper at more than $9,000 over three years – not exactly the everyman’s price range. The company will also provide optional insurance for preferred repair rates.
\nThis month, Softbank also announced<\/a> a partnership with IBM’s Watson, which will bring Japanese language processing to IBM’s famed Jeopardy-winning supercomputer, while bringing a supercomputer to Pepper.
\nI wrote last December about\u00a0the fate of Aldebaran<\/a>, the French\u00a0company\u00a0that Softbank bought three years ago for a\u00a0robot technology that would become Pepper. The brand ‘Aldebaran’ has already faded into the background, and, with the first units shipping to developers (likely under NDA), we may just see how ready Softbank is to show Pepper to the world.
\nWant to learn more about Robots & the intersection of Internet & Hardware? Join us May 28th-30th for the Connected Conference<\/a>!<\/i>
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\nPhoto courtesy of Japan Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The humanoid robot Pepper will start shipping this Friday,\u00a0the CEO of product-owner Softbank announced this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The news\u00a0confirms\u00a0what CEO\u00a0Masayoshi Son told reporters earlier this month, namely that Pepper won’t be hitting shelves until this Summer. The company said it will ship 300 units to developers,\u00a0having received much more than<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":28666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}