And to think that, according to the worst forecasts, within a few years they would have had to rebel against the human being and take control of planet Earth. The future of robots no longer seems so promising (or threatening): SoftBank, the Japanese multinational leader in the sector has announced that it will stop producing Pepper, one of the best known faces – if we can say so – among androids around the world .
Equipped with an artificial intelligence system that allows him to communicate (in an elementary way) with those around him and to analyze their gestures, expressions and tone of voice, Pepper had found one of his first applications as a receptionist in shops and promised that it can also be used for simple control functions in public places (for example by asking those without one to wear a mask), as well as as a companion robot for elderly and lonely people. Since SoftBank, in 2012, bought Pepper’s creator and manufacturer, the French company Aldebaran, only 27,000 examples of the humanoid robot have been built. One of the consequences of Pepper’s stop, first reported by Reuters, is the dismissal of about half of the 330 employees who were in charge of its production in France.
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The farewell to Pepper is a clear signal of how much the commercial audience interested in the capabilities of robots has been reduced, which, in recent years, have struggled to keep their promises. It was thought that the first, sensational, public performances of robots like Pepper (and even more like Sophia or Erica) were only the initial examples of an unstoppable evolution, which would lead these machines to be more and more intelligent: able to communicate and to perform tasks independently. The impression, however, is that in recent years the evolution of humanoid robots – designed to interact with humans – has not lived up to expectations.
And it is perhaps also for this reason that the CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, no longer seems so willing to bet on the advanced robotics sector. In fact, during the month of June it also completed the sale to Hyundai of 80% of Boston Dynamics, the best known – above all thanks to the amazing videos – among the companies producing advanced robots that SoftBank had in turn purchased from Alphabet ( Google) in 2017. A sale that took place at a price of 1.1 billion dollars: a quarter of what, for example, the startup Aurora paid to buy Uber’s autonomous car division.
In the four years of marriage between SoftBank and Boston Dynamics, however, there has been the commercialization of the first two robots of the company born almost 30 years ago: Spot, the quadruped used mainly for surveillance purposes, and the announced robot-warehouse worker Stretch. Hyundai, however, would aim to capitalize on the skills of the US company above all in the development of the “walking cars” it has been working on for some years. And SoftBank instead? According to Reuters, he will focus mainly on the production of Whiz: a cleaning robot that resembles a more advanced version of the Roomba. Other than conquering the planet, the robots of the future still look terribly like ordinary household appliances.
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by Riccardo Luna
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