Pepper

Pepper is a 4-foot semi-humanoid robot designed to interact with people in retail, hospitality, and healthcare settings. Built by SoftBank Robotics (originally Aldebaran), Pepper can recognize faces, basic emotions, and voice tones, and respond with gestures and speech via a tablet mounted on its chest. Over 27,000 units were produced, deployed in banks, hotels, airports, and SoftBank stores worldwide. However, Pepper struggled commercially — businesses found the novelty wore off quickly, and the robot lacked the capability to perform useful tasks beyond greeting and basic Q&A. SoftBank halted production in 2021.