In one of our recent blogs, we took a look at the idea of robots working and interacting alongside people. Two experts who spoke at the Collaborative Robots Workshop at the AIA Vision Show suggested that “Human acceptance” in relation to robots is an important area to keep an eye on as more robots are introduced to the world. Keeping this in mind, I found it interesting that not long after I wrote that blog, I read about the announcement of a robot designed specifically for personal use that can read emotions.
SoftBank Group companies SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran Robotics have announced the joint development of “Pepper,” which SoftBank touts as the world’s first personal robot that can read emotions. Pepper is humanoid robot with four microphones, two HD cameras (in the mouth and forehead), and 3D depth sensor behind the eyes. With these sensors and more, Pepper can take his surroundings into consideration and react proactively using proprietary algorithms. The robot also has voice recognition technology for human-robot communication, as well as emotion recognition capabilities. As a result, according to SoftBank, the robot is able to communicate with people in a natural way.
Bruno Maisionnier, Founder and CEO of Aldebran offered some thoughts on the release that I found particularly interesting.
“For the past nine years, I've believed that the most important role of robots will be as kind and emotional companions to enhance our daily lives, to bring happiness, constantly surprise us, and make people grow,” he said. “The emotional robot will create a new dimension in our lives and new ways of interacting with technology. It’s just the beginning, but already a promising reality.”
While the news of a commercially available personal emotion-recognition robot is exciting, I found his comments on the role of robots to be particularly interesting. Instead of focusing on robots for factory automation or manufacturing, these SoftBank Group companies specifically wanted to develop companion robots. This coincides with an idea I pondered in the aforementioned blog, which is: maybe companion robots will never really take off, but, maybe we are just in the beginning stages of a robotic revolution, one where the novelty wears off and companion robots become a part of everyday life.
This is just my own personal speculation, but doesn’t the idea seem a little bit less crazy every day?
