Furious man attacks SoftBank's robot Pepper

Wouldn't YOU like to meet a Pepper, too? (apologies to the Dr. Pepper soft drink advertising campaign, and, yes, I know it's "BE a Pepper," but, "meet" is more relevant)

...capable of understanding language and emotion.

though apparently not sufficiently enough to read the body language of an aggressive drunk and stay well clear.

He probably couldn't tell the difference between the robot and the staff...

though apparently not sufficiently enough to read the body language of an aggressive drunk and stay well clear.

There are plenty of humans who can't do the same thing either. It's a robot for cripes sake, give Pepper a break!

Just wait humans, this won't be forgotten. Payback will come after the technological singularity.

Have you guys noticed a pattern here? There seems to be a lot of people with communication and anger management issues who when they feel slighted would take it out on others who are weaker/cannot fight back. The bullying culture effect. This particular one even had to get drunk first before amassing enough guts to attack a machine!

Telecommunications companies are the absolute worst at customer communication.Their customer service is so frustrating that it's no wonder this poor guy was driven to drink and anti-robot violence.

capable of understanding language and emotion

That's a joke. Telecoms companies don't even have human staff who can do that.

200000 yen for a Pepper robot? for what? Unless it can cook and clean thats way too much money.

"Pepper is also being used to sell coffee machines in one chain "

I've lately been interested in buying a coffee machine, might be fun to buy one from Pepper, guess I'll have to google to find out which chain it is. I promise not to kick Pepper, regardless of the level of service!

Hey, he could easily be the next prime minister...

Who doesn't want to kick the s*** out of that dumb robot? It's annoying as hell

First Law of Robotics: Never harm a human, or through inaction, let a human be harmed.

Strange. In our fictional universe, our creations are more humane than we, their creators.

Stephen Fry is right: The Biblical god is a capricious, ego-maniacle maniac.

Missed opportunity? Cheap robots designed to get their ass kicked, easily reassembled.

Tyson the Robot "Hey you! Why are you always kissing your bosses ass? You're a weak person with no life!"

Angry Customer "BING! BLAM! CAPOW!"................"Thanks, I needed that"

Fight Club Japanese style

It's a gimic not a robot.

Lol if pepper were a bit more advanced, there would be debates about whether he/she is a sentient being, and whether the dude should be arrested for property damage or man slaughter.

200000 yen for a Pepper robot? for what? Unless it can cook and clean thats way too much money.

monthly fees...., this is Japan where everything useless is overpriced if you have connection.

One should rather expose the reason why this guy got nervous, maybe after checking is phone bill and discovered that he subscribed for several years to the famous 0 yen plan that you pay monthly.

Dealing with Japanese telcos will do that to a man

An amazing market ground for the Japanese telcos to develop their businesses here, specially because there is no consumer protection laws (or it seems), the wild wild west, so consumers end up either paying what ever price fixing is listed or being blacklisted, no wonder why they want to keep this gold mine protected from foreign companies.

Heck last phone I bought all the staff I think were robots, the language was SO SCRIPTED I wasn't sure if they were human or not.

I really dislike stores that force the staff to behave like robots!

Well, better a robot than a person getting assaulted. Hopefully they get this douche off the streets and make him pay for a new one

@ darnname "Hey, he could easily be the next prime minister..."

Pepper or the drunk GG? lol

Future Peppers will evidently need a taser function. also some ultimate fighting skills, Pepper taking down a angry customer or drunk! now thats something id pay to see LOL

When it comes to SofBank, drunk or not, I can well understand the rage. The games they play are utterly frustrating and the hidden charges as well as the derogative service can be quiet enraging. Fortunately he was a Japanese National. Foreigners have to pay 900 Yen per day for 3G and 1000 Yen per day for 4G phone service, and they also have to buy a phone for 30,000.00 Yen ($270.00). That is about $8.00 to $9.00 per day. And having a phone from overseas does not work, they will not give you a card or contract. You have to buy one of their phones. I called them "Yakuza." Well, needless to say, I have not phone service in Japan. Who ever comes to Japan, is better of buying a satellite phone service. May cost more, but it ends up being cheeper than "SoftBank."

It was definitely not robot Pepper's fault, so the drunkard shouldn't have taken it out harshly on Pepper.

Pepper is cheap. pepper is your friend. pepper just wants to help. pepper is good with boiled eggs and on steak. we are going to see a ;lot more peppers as the population ages and immigration continues to be discouraged. maybe that is what this old geezer was annoyed about.

Assault and Pepper? ;)

Uwe Paschen> you might want to look into MVNO and offers such as Mineo. They're not touchy about which phone you use (and are much cheaper than the big 3).

Don't necessarily blame the telcos. Blame the relevant Ministry, which seems to believe that foreigners will rent phones and start running "ore-ore" phone scams. The scripted taurine excrement that everyone must go through is a way of attempting to control who is allowed to talk over the cellular network. Data SIMs are another matter (the Ministry hasn't caught up with Skype and VoIP apps, obviously). Of course, if the telcos had any cojones, they would lobby the Ministry to relax the rules, and thereby increase their revenue.

F4HA604 at Sep. 10, 2015 - 09:53AM JST

"Lol if pepper were a bit more advanced, there would be debates about whether he/she is a sentient being, and whether the dude should be arrested for property damage or man slaughter."

I thought mr pepper survived but was brain damaged or sustained serious injury. Don't die mr pepper! Definirely for the taser option for self-defence.

Assault and Pepper? ;)

Assault on Pepper...