{"id":11534,"date":"2014-06-09T22:15:23","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T05:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=11534"},"modified":"2017-06-04T12:07:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T19:07:10","slug":"softbank-to-start-selling-personal-robots-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/softbank-to-start-selling-personal-robots-next-year","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank to start selling personal robots next year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Teppei Kasai and Yoshiyasu Shida \u2014 Reuters<br \/>\n<br \/> (Reuters) \u2014 Japan\u2019s SoftBank Corp said on Thursday it will start selling human-like robots for personal use by February, expanding into a sector seen key to addressing labour shortages in one of the world\u2019s fastest ageing societies.<\/p>\n<p>The robots, which the mobile phone and Internet conglomerate envisions serving as baby-sitters, nurses, emergency medical workers or even party companions, will sell for 198,000 yen ($1,900) and are capable of learning and expressing emotions, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son told a news conference.<\/p>\n<p>A prototype will be deployed this week, serving customers at SoftBank mobile phone stores in <span class=\"mandelbrot_refrag\"><a class=\"mandelbrot_refrag\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/places\/japan?lc=int_mb_1001\" data-ls-seen=\"1\">Japan<\/a><\/span>, he added. The sleek, waist-high robot, named Pepper, accompanied Son to the briefing, speaking to reporters in a high-pitched, boyish voice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople describe others as being robots because they have no emotions, no heart. For the first time in human history, we\u2019re giving a robot a heart, emotions,\u201d Son said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2014\/06\/05\/us-softbank-robots-idUSKBN0EG0BR20140605\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Teppei Kasai and Yoshiyasu Shida \u2014 Reuters (Reuters) \u2014 Japan\u2019s SoftBank Corp said on Thursday it will start selling human-like robots for personal use by February, expanding into a sector seen key to addressing labour shortages in one of the world\u2019s fastest ageing societies. The robots, which the mobile phone and Internet conglomerate envisions [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64966,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534\/revisions\/64966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}