Pepper robot acts like real teenager, gets job at Pizza Hut

No word if paychecks being saved to buy a used Corolla

SoftBank Robotic's "Pepper" humanoid robot will soon be put to work selling pizzas in Asia.

The robotics division of the Japanese business giant has struck a deal with MasterCard and Pizza Hut to place Pepper units in select pizza parlors in the region. The Pepper bots will be used in the pilot program to both greet customers in the stores and to accept payments through the MasterCard "MasterPass" mobile app.

For MasterCard and Pizza Hut, the robots will serve as a marketing campaign to drum up awareness in the MasterPass payment platform and to bring more customers to the pizza chain in Asia. MasterCard has tried similar campaigns with Pepper-manned "MasterPass Cafe" shops in the region.

"The app's goal is to provide consumers with more memorable and personalized shopping experiences beyond today's self-serve machines and kiosks, by combining Pepper's intelligence with a secure digital payment experience via MasterPass," MasterCard digital payments and labs VP Tobias Puehse said in announcing the deal.

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For SoftBank Robotics, the deal will give the Pepper project further experience with face-to-face human interactions, a key goal for the robotics project. Launched in 2014, Pepper has been designed as a robot capable of interacting with humans through natural conversations and picking up on emotional expressions.

Though largely used for customer service operations, SoftBank has sold a small number of the robots to consumers.

Thus far, however, Pepper has found itself being met with decidedly mixed emotions from the public. The friendly robots have been deployed in a number of customer service and public-facing positions, only to be harassed by sadistic packs of children and beaten up by inebriated bank customers. ®