Will Robots Like Pepper Be The Salespeople Of The Future?

Most shoppers in the United States have not yet met Pepper, the humanoid robot that will be almost entirely staffing a Tokyo mobile phone store this spring, but the retail robots are familiar with us, having already landed on our shores, chatted with Americans and even discerned our emotions within those conversations.

Developed by Aldebaran Robotics, the robots were zipping around a booth at the NRF Big Show at the Javits Center earlier this month with one even taking the main stage for a demo. Executives at Aldebaran, which is headquartered in Paris but has a U.S. office in Boston, said U.S. retailers are not yet using Pepper, which made its commercial debut last spring, but that we can expect to see them “soon.”

“It’s just a matter of months,” predicted Eric Stevenson, Aldebaran Robotics’ director of the Americas during a demo at NRF. “A lot of retailers love innovation, but they want to see it done somewhere else first.”

It is certainly being done. Japanese telecom giant SoftBank Group, which acquired Aldebaran in 2012, made headlines last week after announcing a weeklong experiment in Tokyo, where five Pepper robots will fill in for the human staff at a mobile phone stor e in the upscale Omotesando district from March 28 to April 3 (humans will still be on hand too to check IDs before contracts are signed). But Pepper has been in supplemental roles in stores in Europe where clients include Nissan dealerships, Sephora and Carrefour stores in France and Spain, and more recently Costa Cruises, where Pepper will utilize German, Italian and English skills.

“The way we want you to think of Pepper right now is to augment, not replace the salesperson,” said Steve Carlin, Aldebaran’s vice president of marketing and business development.

One of the reasons that the robots are not stateside yet is because the company does not have the infrastructure in place to service the robots, which are 4 feet tall and come equipped with four microphones, two HD cameras, a 3D depth sensor, and a touchscreen that lets the robot communicate both vocally and by touch.

But despite the maintenance required, don’t underestimate Pepper’s ability to step in when humans are down and out. After two presenters at NRF were absent due to illness, Pepper briefly took to the stage with Stevenson, who was the third presenter. During their conversation, Pepper revealed a presence in hundreds of stores already. Up next is a rollout in 1,000 Nescafe shops in Japan, Stevenson said.

“I can be quite the attention getter,” Pepper said, facing the audience and speaking in a feminine, cartoon-character like voice. “In SoftBank mobile stores, I explain new promotions, in Nescafe shops, I assist shoppers with selection of the coffee machines that correspond to their individual tastes. In Carrefour markets, I inform shoppers of the store’s loyalty program.”

With a flourish, Pepper even threw to a video recording of an interaction with a client in a fashion store, where she was able to help the customer choose some items to try on, convincing her to discard one that would not be flattering to her “lovely figure.”

Besides interacting with customers, the humanoid robots serve as a source of information through a collaboration with IBM Watson for enterprises that can make sense of hidden meanings in data that traditional computers would be unable to understand. While they can interact autonomously, they can also be connected to the cloud, pulling data as needed, and they can be personalized to suit a retailer, by wearing for example, a vest with the store’s name on it. What’s more, Pepper can gather data about how human shoppers are behaving.

“Think about 130 million people walking into a Walmart every month,” said Carlin. “Pepper cannot only tell how many people were engaging with the display but whether these were good interactions.”

Source: New York Business Journal, Teresa Novellino
Photo: Humanoid robots named Pepper, developed by SoftBank Group Corp., gesture during a news conference prior to the Pepper World 2016 event in Tokyo. (Tomohiro Ohsumi)