Slightly disappointing because I liked Pepper's sleek design. However, it's clear that SoftBank isn't going to lead this field. They already lost Boston Dynamics, and as much as I liked the aesthetics of Pepper... it's really the last straggler of that embarrassing wave of social robots of the 2010s. The entire point of it being "emotional" left it doomed from the start because it's using 2010s-era chatbot technology.SoftBank Group Corp is slashing jobs at its global robotics business and has stopped producing its Pepper robot, according to sources and documents reviewed by Reuters, as the conglomerate downgrades its industry ambitions.
Production of the humanoid Pepper, touted as the first robot with "a heart", was stopped last year, according to three sources familiar with the matter and the documents. It would be costly to restart production, two of the sources said.
Built by Foxconn (2317.TW) in China, Pepper was meant to help plug labour shortages but struggled to find a global customer base. Only 27,000 were produced, one of the sources said.
The pullback reflects the fading of Chief Executive Masayoshi Son's plan to make SoftBank the leader in the robotics industry, producing human-like machines that could serve customers and babysit kids.
Those social robots would actually stand a chance this coming decade, actually. If Pepper could use LaMDA instead of Watson, it'd have gone so much further. The technology is almost there. All these companies just started it off too soon.