Let’s Catch Up With Pepper, the Dancing, Surprisingly Helpful Humanoid

[Matt] Maybe you've met Pepper the robot already.

Hello, I'm Pepper.

[Matt] It's designed to make checking into a hotel,

or dealing with a hospital visit,

that much less miserable.

[Pepper] Say cheese.

[Photo Subjects] Cheese.

[Matt] Pepper isn't strong or dexterous enough to

save you from a burning building,

but it is a glimpse into a new era of

complex interaction between humans and robots.

[Pepper] What would you like to try?

That is if the kids could just stay out of the way.

(ambient electronic music)

This is Pepper the hospitality robot.

What we're gonna do now is have me check into

a fantasy hotel, so what I'll do is step in front of Pepper,

and she will notice me.

Welcome to our hotel.

[Matt] Check me in. (digital beeping)

Okay, please enter your reservation number on my tablet.

Let's confirm your booking.

Voila, does your booking look correct on my tablet?

Yes.

(digital beeping)

Awesome.

Here, this will be your room.

[Matt] Pepper's got a human-ish form,

but those arms don't really do much.

They can wave, sure, but not lift things,

so what's the point of physically embodying an intelligence

that can't actually help you in a physical way?

Because a robot like Pepper is a powerful way to

draw people's attention.

That they can talk to it and interact with it,

and feel like it has a meaningful response to them,

is actually far more powerful than a lot of

the pieces of technology we employ every day.

[Matt] It's important to consider that communication

is about so much more than just words.

[Pepper] Which one are you interested in?

[Matt] To be truly useful,

robots will need to read our body language,

our facial expressions for example.

That means looking for clues as to

whether people are happy or sad,

says one of Pepper's engineers who prefers to

call the robot a she.

If that can advance a little farther,

she can decide that the information that she's providing,

you might not be happy with

because you start looking indifferent,

or you're frowning,

or you're no longer looking at her,

so then she can restart.

Pepper is loaded with sensors in order to

interact with its world.

That includes the camera, 2D, up here,

a 3D camera in the eye,

some lidar and sonar down at the bottom,

in order to work its way around, say,

a hospital or hotel.

Also it's about expressing some emotion.

The eyes flash green or blue.

Green is meaning it's processing something.

It was great talking with you.

[Matt] Blue is it's ready to accept a command,

and that also kinda telegraphs an emotion.

The more we entrust robots with increasingly important jobs,

the more they'll need to pick up non-verbal cues.

Doing triage in a hospital for instance.

Certainly, if someone's coming in

buckled over and groaning,

that person probably should get a little more attention than

the person that walked in and seems visually fine anyways.

[Matt] But really, Pepper isn't meant to

outright replace humans, but to compliment them.

I think for the very near future, again,

what you're gonna see with robotics is more around

replacing and automating tasks,

as opposed to full blown duties of

different jobs and roles.

[Matt] Pepper can explain to fearful patients

what an MRI is,

but it can't load you into a machine,

and run the test, and parse the results.

Pepper's pretty limited in its capabilities, sure,

but will only get better at communicating from here.

[Pepper] Say cheese.

[Matt] Oh, also dancing.

(electronic dance music)

Because why not.