Pepper is produced by Foxconn’s plant located in Yantai, Shandong in Mainland China. In February of this year, Foxconn’s Yantai plant commenced mass production of Pepper, producing five robots each hour. With the current increase in production capacity, Foxconn will be able to manufacture ten robots an hour.

However, the supply still cannot meet the demand for Pepper, and Foxconn has increased the number of assembly operation personnel at the Yantai factory from 700 to 1,000 workers, which is a 42.8% increase. This will increase the production capacity to fifteen units an hour, and it is anticipated that the factory will be capable of producing 1,000 Pepper robots each month.

The Pepper robot does not do household chores. It is instead an emotional engine equipped with cloud-based artificial intelligence, which can discern and learn functional human emotions. Its functionality can be expanded through cloud downloads, and its functions can be used to emotionally communicate with people and serve as an accompaniment robot.

As soon as Pepper was launched it received a lot of market interest. Beginning in June of this year, the maximum number of 1,000 units sold out within an hour for six consecutive months. Softbank announced that in order to meet the Christmas season demand, the maximum number of units has been increased by 300 in December to make a new maximum of 1,300 units.

(TR/ Phil Sweeney)