Humanoid robot Pepper can now scan office workers' faces to check if they are wearing masks

Japanese tech company SoftBank has created a version of its Pepper robot that can detect whether office workers are wearing a mask. The 47-inch-high robot with human-like features is already in operation in some countries welcoming visitors to shops, exhibitions and other public spaces. But the upgraded version is designed to stand at the entrance to offices, conferences, airports and other public spaces, to provide a gentle reminder to people to wear masks. Pepper uses enhanced AI face detection to scan a person's face and if it detects the lower half is uncovered, it displays a red circle around on the screen on its chest and says: 'I see one of you is not wearing a mask.' If it sees that the visitor then puts on a mask, the circle turns green and the robot follows up with: 'Thank you for having put on your mask.' SoftBank has developed and released a mask detection feature for its robot Pepper, which it first debuted in 2014.