Will Retail Stores Of The Future Be Run By Robots?

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

SoftBank gives preview Of robotic retail with Pepper, its humanoid robot.

Is our new tech-savvy customer base ready for robotic sales associates? Japanese tech firm SoftBank says yes, and offers its humanoid robot, Pepper, as an example.

Softbank is launching an online app store for Pepper, a robot that can read and respond to human emotions. The company also plans to open four new Pepper for Biz Atelier retail stores that will allow enterprise prospects to see the robots in action.

Pepper made its commercial debut last June, and SoftBank CEO Ken Miyauchi told the Japan Times that it could represent a labor-saving solution for companies that are short on manpower. The one drawback with the robotic help is that they have some difficulty checking people’s IDs when signing contracts.

Currently, approximately 500 companies in Japan are utilizing the Pepper robots, which can sense and respond to nuances of human interaction, in customer-facing applications. Users include 37 banks and financial institutions, Nissan Motor Corp., and Nestle. Pepper can recognize emotions in human voices and body movements and respond accordingly. Clients sign a three-year contract to use Pepper, which costs approximately $465 to rent each unit.

SoftBank plans to run a cell phone store between March 28 to April 3 in Tokyo, staffed by five or six Peppers who will greet shoppers, demonstrate cellphones, and help ring up purchases. Human employees will be on hand to help Pepper check IDs.

SoftBank also says that some 200 companies are set to help build software for the robots. The Pepper for Biz Atelier stores will serve to showcase the Pepper robots for prospective business owners. Additional retail capabilities are under development. In July 2015, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and tech-product manufacturer Foxconn purchased 20 percent stakes in SoftBank’s robotics unit to further that spread of Peppers through businesses worldwide.

“I think this year will be the beginning of the smart robot era for corporate (customers),” Miyauchi said, referring to devices that are connected to the Internet and can use cloud-based artificial intelligence.

PC World predicts that Pepper could be “the iPhone of robots,” as the “vanguard of an era of mechanized, cloud-connected assistants,” though the days of robotically-staffed retail stores are realistically still a ways away. “Pepper is at this point still really just a toy,” Damian Thong, a technology analyst at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, told PC World via email, adding, “The technology is improving and prices are declining, but we are still far from the point where robots can be readily integrated into our lives beyond relatively simple tasks like carpet cleaning.”