Could customers walking into a Sprint retail store someday be greeted by a robot, or look on as a robot demonstrates how to use a new product? It may sound far-fetched, but a Sprint VP told RCR Wireless News that the carrier is exploring the option.
Wayne Ward, Sprint VP of business and product development said during the recent TC3 conference in Mountain View, Calif., that Sprint is considering ways to use parent company SoftBank’s consumer humanoid robot “Pepper,” which the company describes as “able to converse with you, recognize and react to your emotions, move and live autonomously.”
“The concepts that we’re looking at in terms of how [Pepper] would help us would be, No. 1, can we use Pepper in our own retail stores to help with hosting and greeting customers? Can we utilize Pepper as a way to demonstrate products? And also to drive traffic into stores. To some degree, Pepper can emote and has human-like qualities. We feel that’s something people are interested in.”
“Then, more specifically, what we’re looking at is how we can introduce the concept of Pepper to our enterprise customers and help some large enterprise customers in the area of manufacturing and robotics … in the same manner we would be using Pepper as greeter staff, as shopper concierge. Those are two of the general areas we’re looking at.”
Here’s a video of the interview with Ward:
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Ward explained that the approach to integrating robotics into manufacturing isn’t geared toward replacing humans with robots but augmenting facilities with the addition of robots.
SoftBank describes Pepper thusly: “Engaging and friendly, Pepper is much more than a robot, he’s a companion able to communicate with you through the most intuitive interface we know: voice, touch and emotions.”
The robot was developed for SoftBank Mobile and “is already greeting and interacting with customers in stores.”
For more coverage of the TC3 show, check out the RCR Wireless News YouTube page.