It was in 1952 that TEZUKA Osamu – dubbed “the god of manga” – drew “Astro Boy” (a humanoid robot). Since then, humanoid robots have continued to be developed, and robots like Asimo (from Honda) that walk on two legs have appeared. On June 5 this year, SoftBank Corporation announced the debut of “Pepper,” a robot that can understand human emotion. The humorous conversation between Pepper and President SON Masayoshi at the press conference was as follows: Pepper: “By the way President Son, with so many flashes going off, don’t you feel dizzy?” President Son: “I am all right. I’m used to it.” Pepper: “To tell the truth, I feel good. I want them to take more photos. I’ll strike some poses.” Equipped with artificial intelligence, Pepper speaks fluently and acts according to its analysis of recordings of human smiles and responses. By accumulating data on human emotions and by accessing data recorded by other Peppers from its connection to a cloud AI, Pepper is able to learn. President Son says that as they can work for 24 hours, the introduction of 30 million robots can cover the shortfall in Japanese labor. Pepper is scheduled to go on sale for 198,000 yen in February, 2015. On the other hand, in July the world’s first “Robot White Paper 2014” was published by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). With the world’s largest number of patent applications related to robots, Japan has been called the “Robot Superpower.” Prime Minister ABE Shinzo is relying on robots for a large part of his economic growth strategy; by putting them to work, he hopes to kick start an industrial revolution. At present, mainstream, so called “industrial robots” are used to manufacture cars and so forth. From now on, it is expected that, besides humanoid robots, other kinds of robots can be used in many different fields: such as for nursing and for performing surgical operations in the medical field and for providing assistance in the disaster relief field.