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Humanoid 'Pepper' Robot Needs US Android Programmers (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Japan-based SoftBank Robotics announced Wednesday at Google I/O, the company's annual developer's conference, that it is opening a new Pepper-focused outpost in San Francisco and unveiling an Android SDK, or software development kit, in the hopes of enticing programmers to write code for the robot. Asked if SoftBank will roll out at SDK for iOS developers, Carlin says he wouldn't rule anything out but "for the moment Android is the pervasive language." Pepper is a white hard-plastic robot with humanoid features such as large eyes and arms as well as a display screen for a chest. The robot is said to be able to read human emotions by processing visual and vocal inputs through its various microphones and cameras. Its purpose is to be "much more than a robot, he is a genuine humanoid companion created to communicate with you in the most natural and intuitive way," according to the company's website. Pepper already has been deployed commercially in Japan, where it is used to greet customers at 140 SoftBank Mobile stores as well as help take orders at fast food eateries and discuss car model details at dealerships. Carlin says programmers working on Pepper-related tech will get access to "a best in class developer portal" that includes a developer forum, links to robotics workshops, access to SoftBank's engineering team and scientific details about Pepper. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) at Google I/O, which the company claims advances machine learning capability by a factor of three generations.
We don't like the overseas time zones and with H1B's we can chain them to the job.
Looks nothing like Pepper. Where are the freckles across the nose?
I mean, it's working at car dealerships!
Android may be pervasive but that doesn't mean it's good. Java sucks so much on its own and Android is even worse. The tools are slow and suck anyway. I have never had an IDE get in my way as much as Android Studio (Eclipse is way worse though).
Then you have Java, holy hell what a piece of shit. I remember the first time I did Java development (back in the pre-1.0 days) and I was constantly thinking "WTF were they thinking?!" when trying to use the API's. Today it's still the same, there are so many stupid "Java-isms" that are totally retarded and they just keep making new stuff the same way.
Such big, innocent trusting eyes.
Oh man, they're going to eat you up. I can't wait to see the depravity they inflict on Pepper.
Also, WTF, no legs?! This is 2016, a robot should be able to walk around like God and Lewis Padgett intended!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It looks about as humanoid as some toys by Fisher Price.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
First thing I am going to program for this robot is have it shoot nerf guns any anyone it perceives as sad. It will then Speak: "Turn that frown upside down meatbag".
We'll sure be able to afford cell phones, fast food and new cars when our jobs are automated!
It will then Speak: "Turn that frown upside down meatbag".
Followed by "You have twenty seconds to comply."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Bender" mode.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The OP is about a robot but the editor note is about TPU's which are never mentioned in the OP or article.
no seriously, do you not remember this?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Reading about humanoid robots needing American android programmers got me really confused.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
What a joke. A $8k USD platform. And compared to the ROS compatible robots out there you are MUCH BETTER off developing for a platform that supports ROS.
I believe it is possible using command line tools, but make sure you don't ever even remotely try to load the Android emulators. Although I understand there are faster 3rd party ones available, the official one runs like it was coded in Excel macros.
In any case, if that's your preferred dev style (mine too!), prepare to be "eclipsed" by Google kids using the latest and greatest hardware.
CAPTCHA: asocial
Here's a link to the documentation, as it seems to be kind of hard to find through Google: https://android.aldebaran.com/... Note that the SDK contains a virtual robot so you can use it even if you do not have a Pepper.
Well, I do not know about a "better" way, but some of the tools in the Pepper SDK (like the robot simulator) are standalone executables so you could certainly manage to run them independently. On the ther hand there is no doc for doing this, so you would need some messing arround to figure it out.