Back in 2014, the Japanese-based Softbank Group began producing a line of humanoid robots called "Pepper."
Softbank Group has decided to put a pause on the Pepper project as the robots have each experienced "multiple firings" from the jobs they've held.
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Pepper was designed to read emotions, but one robot assigned to work at a funeral home kept breaking down during practice runs. Funeral-business manager Osamu Funaki told the Wall Street Journal, "What if it refused to operate in the middle of a ceremony? It would be such a disaster."
A grocery chain in Scotland installed a Pepper in their flagship store in Edinburgh, but it was fired after continually directing customers to look “in the alcohol section” when they asked where things were.
Softbank Group is hoping to work out the kinks with Pepper before issuing them out again, though robotics expert Professor Noel Sharkey believes the humanoid robots may have done more harm than good.
He told the BBC, "Pepper did a lot to harm genuine robotics research by giving an often false impression of a bright cognitive being that could hold conversations."
Takayuki Furuta, head of the Future Robotics Technology Center at Chiba Institute of Technology, added, "Because it has the shape of a person, people expect the intelligence of a human, the level of the technology completely falls short of that. It’s like the difference between a toy car and an actual car."
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