Pepper is one of the first humanoid robots on the market that is capable of identifying the principal human emotions: joy, anger and surprise. She is able to scan non-verbal language, such as the angle of a person’s head.
Pepper is a very friendly robot who reaches out to communicate with humans
But one of Pepper’s main advantages is the potential to use custom software development to adjust her behaviour, AI, movements and many of the robot’s other exciting features according to your business needs. This makes Pepper unique and interesting to us as a custom software development company that is looking for new opportunities and niches to attract new clients.
We’re talking to Slava Dubovitsky, who is a certified Pepper developer at Diatom Enterprises – a company located in Latvia.
– Is Pepper the first humanoid robot available for purchase and custom software development?
– No. But Pepper has many advantages and surprising features that were only available in some custom-made robots created at American and Japanese universities. Now we have all these features on the table and we can develop custom software for her.
– For her?
– Yes, somehow Pepper is a she. We need to ask SoftBank Robotics, Pepper’s creators, that question.
– Okay, you develop software for Pepper. What programming language do you use for Pepper?
– We use Python.
– How many certified developers are there in your company who can develop software for Pepper? Where did you get these certifications?
– We were trained in France and at this moment, we have four guys here in Riga, who are certified developers for the Pepper robot. But, what’s interesting is that developing software for Pepper is not that hard, and we already understood that it would take a week to train a new developer to help us. Anyways, right now we’re all busy with super interesting and exciting development tasks!
– What kind of software can you develop for Pepper? What are the most interesting and promising things you see for her?
– We can develop presentations, training, and learning apps for Pepper. Actually, this is a huge topic and we are going to do a presentation about it in the near future.
– Okay, interesting. But let’s put it another way. I need a simple app of an application for a waiting line in a hospital. The difference in the way that application can be presented to is that Pepper will talk to visitors, say “hi,” and call the next number. What is the development time for the simplest application with very friendly emotions, including greetings and advice to push a button on the Android tablet that we have with the Pepper robot?
– About a week of work. It’s very easy! But in the future, you’ll be able to adjust the application more and more. It just scares me to think all of the different kinds of features we could add to this application!
So, we’re looking forward to your presentation and good luck with Pepper!