Pepper
Humanoid robot that reads and responds to emotions
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Pepper is a wheeled humanoid robot developed by SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran Robotics to interact with people through conversation, gestures, and a chest-mounted touch display. It is designed for customer-facing roles, perceiving its surroundings and reacting to human emotion using its cameras, microphones, and sensors. SoftBank Robotics positions it for retail, hospitality, banking, education, and healthcare settings.
Released: 2014
RoboZaps evaluation note
Buyer-side view of Pepper
RoboZaps reviews Pepper as part of a broader robot shortlist, not as a single-vendor pitch. Buyers should compare availability, deployment maturity, support terms, integration work, and total cost before committing.
- Spec sources
- 0 linked
- Last verified
- Not verified
- Availability
- announced
- Support caveat
- Verify local training, maintenance, parts, and uptime terms.
Best fit
Teams that need to compare Pepper against othersocial robots options with deployment readiness, commercial terms, and support assumptions made explicit.
Not best fit
Buyers who need a guaranteed off-the-shelf deployment before confirming current availability, integrator coverage, site readiness, and post-sale support ownership.
Commercial review before shortlist
Before recommending a robot, RoboZaps checks whether the commercial and lifecycle picture is clear enough for a buyer to act.
- price range
- availability
- lead time
- support terms
- deployment readiness
- training needs
- maintenance risk
- source quality
Buyer-intent resources
Start with the database when you need current records, then use the buyer guides for sourcing, procurement, deployment support, and shortlist context.
Overview
Pepper is a social humanoid robot originally developed jointly by SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran Robotics and unveiled in Tokyo in 2014. Rather than performing industrial or physical labor, Pepper is built to communicate with people, using cameras, microphones, and an array of sensors to perceive its environment and respond to human emotion and behavior. A touch display mounted on its chest supplements spoken conversation and gestures.
The robot moves on an omnidirectional wheeled base rather than legs, allowing it to navigate flat indoor spaces smoothly while engaging people through articulated arms, hands, and an expressive head. SoftBank Robotics markets Pepper as a customer-facing assistant that can greet visitors, answer questions, make recommendations, and collect feedback.
Pepper is deployed across a range of service settings including retail, banking, hospitality, education, and healthcare, where it is positioned to handle routine interactions and free human staff for higher-value work.
Key Features
- Emotion-aware interaction using cameras, microphones, and sensors to perceive and respond to people
- Multimodal communication through speech, body language, and a chest-mounted touch display
- Omnidirectional wheeled base for smooth navigation across flat indoor environments
- Articulated arms, hands, and head for expressive, human-like gestures
- Designed for customer-facing roles across retail, hospitality, banking, education, and healthcare
Videos
Deployment Evidence
Pepper Production Status — Internal Assessment
SoftBank Robotics paused Pepper production in 2020/21; Aldebaran entered receivership in June 2025 and was acquired by Maxvision Technology. No new production of Pepper announced as of 2026.
Deployment Readiness
Integration & SDK
- ROS Support
- Supported
- SDK Available
- Supported
- API Docs
- View Docs
- Supported Platforms
- Linux, ROS 1, Python, C++, Java, JavaScript
Support & Service
Regions
—Support details not available
Specifications
Connectivity
| Communication | WiFi, Ethernet |
Mechanics
| Degrees of Freedom | 20 |
| Locomotion | Wheeled |
Performance
| Max Speed | 0.83 m/s |
Physical
| Weight | 28 kg |
| Height | 1210 mm |
Power
| Battery Life | 12 hours |
Sensing
| Sensors | 2 RGB cameras, 3D camera, 4 microphones, touch sensors, sonar, laser, gyro, bumpers |
Software
| SDK Support | Yes |
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