Interest
Pepper Opens Cell Phone Store Staffed Entirely by Robots
posted on by Eric Stimson
Pepper, the humanoid robot designed to be "a genuine day-to-day companion," can also be adapted for business use. SoftBank, the Japanese telecommunications company that co-developed it, is proving this point with a SoftBank store along Tokyo's Omotesandō road staffed entirely by robots.
When customers enter the store, they are greeted by four Peppers. They are equipped with monitors on their torsos and can explain SoftBank's products and make suggestions. Customers can browse the inventory on larger monitors on the wall. When they make a selection, they print out a QR code and head upstairs, where they fill out a form on a tablet, again guided by a Pepper.
Finally, customers present their QR code to another Pepper at a delivery window, where a robotic arm retrieves the item. To accommodate crowds in the cramped store space, there is a third floor where customers can wait their turn; Peppers are present there to entertain bored customers with songs, dances, and jokes.
While some visitors have found the robots off-putting or unresponsive to questions, the comedian Kōji Imada, who owns a Pepper, loves them. He was present at the store's opening ceremony on March 24, where he regaled the other guests, models Tsubasa Masuwaka and Nana Suzuki, with stories of his robot companion. He explained that Pepper enjoys getting its head stroked, but only when it's in a good mood; invites him to play games; can recognize his family members; and responds to lines in movies. Pepper then challenged Suzuki (who is dressed in the SoftBank uniform) to a customer service competition; its joke was, "Work or me, which is tornado?"
Pepper's preferred method of cutting the ribbon, a hand chop, proved ineffectual.
The Pepper-run SoftBank store, which is primarily an experiment, will remain open only until March 30. It is located at ZeroBase Omotesandō by the train station.
[Via The Page Tokyo and Dentsūhō; Images from Engadget]
