In the fourth installment of the series, we'll learn about Pepper (Pepper), a robot equipped with artificial intelligence to understand human emotions. If you haven't watched past content in the series yet, I recommend checking it out first.
[AI Story] Artificial Intelligence Challenging Humans (1) Deep Blue (Deep Blue)
[AI Story] Humans vs. Artificial Intelligence (2) Watson (Watson)
[AI Story] AlexNet (AlexNet) opened the era of human vs. artificial intelligence (3) deep learning
Robots that appeared only in fantasy and movies in the past are already being used in various ways. They do dangerous work on behalf of people, perform tedious repetitive tasks, and perform tasks given according to orders quickly and without errors. However, it is true that it is far from a robot that resembles the person we have dreamed of.
However, along with the development of advanced technology, humanoid robots, or humanoid (Humanoid) *, are appearing. It seems that they are getting closer and closer to robots that look like humans and act like humans, like the definition of humanoid, which is a compound word of “human,” and “oid,” which is a suffix meaning “the same thing as”.
Perhaps the day is not far off when a familiar and strong robot like “Andrew” played by the late Robin Williams in the movie “Bicentennial Man” ** will appear.
Bicentennial Man, sources
Pepper (Pepper), a robot that understands human emotions
Humanoid began to expand in 2000 after Honda developed the robot “Asimo,” which can walk on two legs. However, they still looked close to people, and they didn't act like people. Furthermore, it was far from being able to interact with people like the humanoids in the movie.
However, in 2014, SoftBank announced Pepper with the title of the world's first robot that recognizes emotions. At the press conference, SoftBank Chairman Son Jeong introduced Pepper by introducing that he can not only recognize people's emotions, but also say and act according to their emotions. Pepper's intention is clearly evident when he says, “Pepper has finally joined a normal family as a new member of the family.”
humanoid pepper (pepper), sources
2 technologies that made humanoid pepper possible
The first is emotion recognition technology.
Pepper is said to recognize people's emotions by looking at facial expressions or hearing voices. In fact, when Chairman Son Jeong smiled awkward in front of Pepper at the presentation, he said, “That's a fake smile,” and pointed out, “Aren't your eyes laughing?” Chairman Son Jeong laughed when he heard this answer, and Pepper said, “That's a real laugh.” ***
Furthermore, Pepper explained that they don't just act as previously programmed, but that they recognize the emotions of family members who adopted Pepper and create their own behavior patterns. For example, if your child is happy to see Pepper dancing, Pepper is dancing more often. ***
The second is cloud-based artificial intelligence.
Pepper is equipped with sensors and programs that recognize human emotions and behavior patterns. The head contains a microphone and camera touch sensor, and the chest contains a gyro sensor, a hand touch sensor, a sound wave sensor, a laser sensor, and a bumper sensor, so it can understand human emotions. Thanks to this, it is possible to learn human emotions by recognizing and scoring human facial expressions. ****
Additionally, all Peppers share learned information through a connected cloud. It means that thousands of Peppers meet many people, talk, and share the emotions and reactions they perceive with other Peppers through the cloud. In other words, all peppers can continue to grow and develop through this process.
This is clearly an advance compared to conventional robots that work as programmed. This was made possible through the combination of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Therefore, Chairman Son Jeong also introduced it as a robot**** that grows on its own with love.
The current state of pepper, which has recently hit its limits
Pepper certainly had a fresh shock and appeared brilliantly. It attracted so much attention that the initial quantity of 1000 units was sold out in 1 minute. Since then, it has been introduced to SoftBank stores as well as service sites such as banks, cafes, and hotels in Japan, and has also been used in large supermarkets, banks, and bookstores in Korea.
Recently, however, Pepper has stopped new production, and the news is that related business divisions have also been scaled.***** This is quite disappointing compared to the expectations received at the time of its introduction. When I saw the advertising****** at the time of launch, Pepper seemed like it would be a nearly perfect pet robot, but in reality, it didn't meet the market's expectations.
While finishing
The Pepper era seems to be coming to an end. However, this does not mean that the humanoid dream of understanding human emotions has disappeared. Even at this moment, advanced technologies such as emotion recognition technology and cloud-based artificial intelligence that made Pepper possible continue to advance.
The other day, I read an interesting article about pepper. It was about studying how to express AI's decision-making process with voice. Based on the idea that “if people can hear what robots think, robots will be more reliable,” they combined software that imitates human cognitive processes and a document-speech conversion processor and planted ******* in Pepper.
The reason I was impressed by this research was that I was able to see the potential of 'explainable AI'******** to ease human anxiety about artificial intelligence. This is because it can increase trust in AI and robots, and make it possible to expect higher performance through interaction with humans.
If you look at this, it may soon become an impossible dream for an AI robot that understands even high-level emotions such as human love and coexists with us.
References
[1] Technology and development trends related to emotional robots that interact with humans https://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/JAKO201624558248286.pdf
[2] https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/페퍼_(로봇)
[3] https://namu.wiki/w/페퍼(휴머노이드)
[4] Strengthening the competitiveness of SoftBank's robot “Pepper” https://now.k2base.re.kr/portal/trend/mainTrend/view.do?poliTrndId=TRND0000000000032396&menuNo=200004&pageIndex =
[5] SoftBank Robotics Pepper introduction pagehttps://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/pepper
[6] [Interview] Sakata Dai SoftBank Robotics Chief Business Officer http://economychosun.com/client/news/view.php?boardName=C00&t_num=13610992
[7] [Coverage file] Going to the site of the 4th Industrial Revolution ④ - SoftBank Robotics Edition https://news.sbs.co.kr/news/endPage.do?news_id=N1004290631&plink=COPYPASTE&cooper=SBSNEWSEND
[8] SoftBank announces robot that recognizes emotions... sales price 2 million won https://www.bloter.net/newsView/blt201406050007
[9] I asked the robot to say “the thoughts in my heart”... https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/science/technology/992311.html#csidx94cbfaa021f9dff801d28b1b478f674
[10] Pepper (Pepper), an emotion-recognition robot that talks with customers https://youtu.be/t2VgzMyhkG8
Good content to watch together
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