I am late reporting this news, but better late than never. I simply can’t miss it – I want to write about the Pepper Tech Festival 2014, which was held on 20th September, in Tokyo, Japan – an event organized by Softbank.

There were around 1000 people that could attend it. If most of them were developers, some famous members of the video game and robotics industries were also seen in the audience.

The opening was performed by 5 peppers, as you can see on this video Here
(also featured at the top of this post)

ptf_carre

I didn’t have the chance to be in Japan for this festival, but you can watch the interview between SoftBank Robotics CEO Fumihide Tomizawa and Aldebaran CEO Bruno Maisonnier, who shared their vision of a world with robots.

Watch the interview Here

In the showroom, some companies were doing demonstration of what they already managed to create for Pepper. Here are some examples of what was showcased:

  • Double dialog, by 1-10 Design: two synchronized Pepper are chatting with someone and alternatively deal the text between each other or say it at the same time.
  • Picking up objects, by Sofnec: Pepper can pick a cube and put it over another one.
  • Pepper orchestra, by Maywa Denki: a music performance performed by Pepper and a group of musicians using crazy instruments.
  • A remote for Pepper used as a smart house interface, by Yukai.
  • Pepper sketch artist: Pepper memorizes your face and draws it on his tablet.

The two main elements to remember about the conference are:

  1. A clarification about the pricing of Pepper: it’s 2000$ + 100$/month for 36 months.
  2. A lot of interest for Choregraphe, and a real good surprise to discover how easy and powerful it is.
    People who attended the TechFes had the opportunity to order their own Pepper for an early delivery (before the consumer release). Lucky them !

Several hundred were pre-sold, which highlights the great interest of people for Pepper in Japan.

Below are some pictures of the graphic research for Pepper. Simply amazing!

img_2986_copie img_2985 img_2990 img_2987

What else ?

Well,  Aldebaran community is super useful and full of resources.

Check their website: https://community.aldebaran.com 

  • You can download their software suite to bring your robot to life with their graphical user interface Choregraphe, SDKs and NAOQi OS.
  • You can discover the basics of programming and improve your knowledge in specific areas with their documentation.
  • You can dive deeper into robot programming with a lots of tutorials aimed for beginner though expert levels ! Nice. Along the possibility to find answers to your most common issues with their FAQ’s.

Example of a robotics user training Here

If you’re from Softbank and enjoy my blog, can you PM me and send me a Pepper robot please? who knows…worth a try! 🙂  

An event not to be missed next year.

 

Image credits: Aldebaran Community, Softbank
Sources:  Aldebaran Community, Softbank