Industrial motion control includes robotics, but there’s a whole category of robot ideas that doesn’t apply in factories, breweries, or printing shops. Industrial robots don’t have faces, they don’t have personalities, and they don’t have voices, whether cute or scary.
And they don’t do ecommerce. Until now. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pepper, the service worker robot so popular in Japan, has a selection of costumes and accessories, including faces, to choose from on Cyber Monday.
The store, Rierie, which the owners believe is the first clothing store for robots, sells traditional kimonos, Western style clothing, butler’s uniforms, wizard’s gear, Santa Claus costumes, jewelry (with suction cups for the earrings), and decals of lips and eyebrows to create facial expressions.
Mitsuru Numata, the owner, is quoted as saying, “We are not doing it for the money. We aim to offer the joy of the experience.”
Pepper is used for customer service applications and in homes. But Baxter and Sawyer, industrial robots designed to collaborate with human workers, may be next. Facilities that use the brother robots report that people put hats and scarves on them.
Can kimonos be far behind?
We don’t offer clothes for your industrial motion units, but if you have Rexroth electric drives, controls, or servo motors, we can keep them in trim. We offer phone support, field support, and emergency replacement units as well as factory repair and reman.