Pepper
Pepper was Softbank’s version of a friendly robot assistant. It’s more humanoid than the other robots on this list, because it was meant to be used for customer service. It could speak 15 languages and was trotted out at several global events. Alas, in 2020, Softbank laid off several employees in its global robotics division and halted production on the Pepper robot. Softbank claims Pepper isn’t dead dead—it’s just opted to not make more. That feels a bit like arguing semantics so RIP to a wholesome bot that only ever wanted to help.
