SoftBank stops production of humanoid robot Pepper due to lack of demand – IT Pro – News

I do have good experiences with these robots in healthcare, especially in geriatrics.

You notice that these elderly people are quickly impressed by such a ‘human’ robot, and remain so, while other target groups quickly get bored (children, for example). As soon as the robot has the attention of these elderly people, these elderly people can be ‘activated’, for example by singing songs with them, asking questions and motivating them. Just looking at it works very well.

That doesn’t seem like much, but even this minimal activation already has a positive effect on the well-being and recovery of the elderly. I also know of examples of elderly people having difficulty activating until we introduced the robot to them.

This all sounds like advertising, but that’s not my point. Because technically I agree that the device is very broken and not user-friendly at all. I also think that they never had a good target audience in mind, so the development was probably never properly aligned. It was actually a coincidence that we did see opportunities in geriatrics, but I doubt whether the manufacturer ever saw through that. For that reason, I’m actually not surprised that this product has had an empty lifespan.

Unfortunately.

PS I must add that I have no experience with the ‘Pepper’, but especially with its smaller brother, the ‘NAO’. However, they can both do the same thing regarding what we used the robot for.

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