Softbank's Robotics BusinessPrepares To Scale Up

The Pepper robot looks up at a delegate at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Thursday 24 May, 2018. Billionaire Masayoshi Son is facing a tough challenge in growing his robotics business in Europe. His conglomerate Softbank bought French robot maker Aldebaran in 2013 for $100 million. Two years later it released a waist-high robot named Pepper. With a high-pitched voice and doe-eyed, friendly gaze that follow's your own as you move around it, Pepper exudes cuteness, building off Aldebaran's expertise in building machines that can pick up on human emotions.