SoftBank Robotics

SoftBank Robotics is a Japanese company that has been a pioneer in social and service robotics, bringing robots into everyday human interactions long before the current humanoid robotics boom. Founded in 2014 as a subsidiary of the SoftBank Group, the company is best known for Pepper, a semi-humanoid robot designed to read and respond to human emotions, and NAO, a smaller programmable humanoid widely used in education and research institutions around the world.

Pepper became one of the first commercially available social robots, deployed in thousands of locations including retail stores, hotels, hospitals, and banks across Japan, Europe, and North America. Its ability to engage with customers, provide information, and create interactive experiences demonstrated that robots could play meaningful roles in service industries. NAO, originally developed by Aldebaran Robotics (acquired by SoftBank in 2015), has become a standard platform in robotics education and academic research, with a large global community of developers.

While SoftBank Robotics’ current offerings are focused more on social interaction and service roles than heavy-duty physical tasks, the company’s extensive experience in deploying robots at scale in public-facing environments provides valuable lessons for the broader humanoid robotics industry. Their work has helped establish consumer acceptance of robots in daily life and has contributed significantly to the understanding of human-robot interaction design.