Japanese companies have long relied on robots, and with good reason: High wages and a shrinking population have pushed manufacturers looking for improved productivity to the forefront of robotic technology. The country’s third-richest man, Takemitsu Takizaki, is the founder and chairman of Keyence (6861:JP), an Osaka manufacturer of sensors used in factory automation.
Japanese engineers have also tried, with less success, to roll out all sorts of cool machines for consumers. Remember Sony’s (6758:JP) robotic pet? In 1999, the company introduced the AIBO, an electronic dog that Sony promised would be the beginning of “an entirely new market for robot entertainment.“
AIBO made it only to middle age in dog years: Sony sold 150,000 of the electronic pets before pulling the plug in 2006. But plenty of others are still around. Paro, a cute baby-seal robot, has for the past decade been providing company for elderly people in nursing homes, and Time magazine lauded the Ri-Man, a robotic health-care assistant, as one of the best inventions of 2006. A robot from Honda, the Asimo, can “hop, jump, balance on one foot, and transition seamlessly between walking and running.”
Japan’s robots haven’t yet crossed into the mainstream, but now the country’s second-richest man is trying to change that. Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank (9984:JP), has set up a new robotics division that is pushing a 4-foot tall humanoid machine called the Pepper that can crack jokes, read expressions, and if all goes according to plan, shill products.
Son’s strategy received a major endorsement today from Nestlé (NESN:VX), which announced it will be using the Pepper to sell its Nescafé machines in Japan starting in December. Thankfully, the robots won’t be serving coffee themselves, just trying to charm consumers. “Pepper will be able to explain Nescafé products and services and engage in conversation with consumers,” Kohzoh Takaoka, president and CEO of Nestlé Japan, said in a statement.
The plan is to start slowly, with 20 Peppers by the end of the year. But Nestlé has big hopes for the little robots and expects to deploy them in some 1,000 stores next year.
The Nestlé deal is just the beginning of SoftBank’s Pepper ambitions. SoftBank plans on selling the robots to Japanese consumers early next year, and it will make the Pepper available in the U.S. at retail stores of Sprint, the telecom carrier acquired last year by SoftBank in a $22 billion deal. Bruno Maisonnier, chief executive of Aldebaran, SoftBank’s French company developing the robot, expects to sell “millions” of the machines, he told Bloomberg News in June. “We’re betting that a huge number of people will buy the robots.”
