Pepper: a humanoid that left the shop floor and stayed in the classroom

A humanoid introduced as a robot with feelings

Pepper was a humanoid announced in June 2014 by SoftBank of Japan and Aldebaran of France. Masayoshi Son introduced it as the world’s first personal robot able to read emotions. It stood 121 cm tall, moved on three wheels instead of legs and carried a tablet on its chest. General sale began in Japan in June 2015 with a first batch of 1,000 units. In practice it was rented rather than sold. Home buyers paid 36 months of fees on top of the robot’s price, and business customers paid ¥55,000 a month on a 36-month contract they could not cancel.

When the three-year contracts ended, 15% wanted to renew

SoftBank placed Pepper in large numbers in its own phone shops. In 2018, as the first business contracts were ending, The Robot Report cited a Japanese survey in which only 15% of companies said they would renew. They gave cost, the floor space it took up, the fact that people or a website could do the same job, and the lack of a clear task as reasons. A grocery in Edinburgh tried Pepper for a week and described it as little more than a walking billboard. SoftBank stopped production in 2020. The European company was sold to Germany’s United Robotics Group and went bankrupt in 2025, and China’s Maxvision bought the Pepper platform and its intellectual property.

Classrooms and labs kept using it

Away from the shop floor, the picture was different. By March 2022 Pepper had been used in more than 50,000 lessons at about 1,300 schools in Japan. Since 2017 it has been the official platform for the RoboCup@Home competition. SoftBank Robotics in Japan now sells Pepper+ with AI conversation, and in 2026 Guinness recognised Pepper as the first mass-produced humanoid service robot. Researchers have complained about overheating, a shell that cracks easily and software updates that stopped. After the European company’s bankruptcy, universities worried whether research robots that relied on the cloud would keep working.

A human-sized body doing a tablet’s job

In shops, Pepper gave directions and promoted products. A tablet kiosk or a member of staff could do that for less. In classrooms and labs, the body itself was useful because it drew people’s attention. The same robot was judged differently depending on where it was placed.

Could a single screen do what this robot’s body does?

What we haven’t confirmed

• Actual sales and actual rental renewal rates (the 15% figure is stated intent)
• The sample and method of the survey behind the 15% figure
• Whether Pepper+ uses newly built hardware or adds AI to existing robots
• The rights arrangement between Maxvision and SoftBank Robotics in Japan