Mizuho Financial employs SoftBank’s Pepper robot at Tokyo branch

The bank intends to utilize the services of the robot at five of its branches in Tokyo by the year-end.

Mizuho Financial head of personal banking Tetsuhiko Saito was quoted by Bloomberg as saying: "Pepper will get people excited about going to the bank."

Introduced by SoftBank Robotics and SoftBank Mobile in June, Pepper is claimed to be the first robot in the world to read people’s emotions, as well as generate its own emotions.

Pepper uses functions developed by SoftBank’s arm Cocoro SB to artificially generate its own emotions, modeled on the human release of hormones.

In June, 1,000 robots were claimed to be sold in one minute, 1,000 more will be offered for sale on July 31.

Alibaba and Foxconn Technology are investing JPY14.5bn each in SoftBank Robotics to bring Pepper and other robotics businesses to global markets.

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