A Japanese company has programmed a popular robot, Pepper, to perform Buddhist funeral rites. But will society ever accept artificial intelligence as religious authorities and ritual specialists?

Meet Pepper, a humanoid robot that reads the emotions of people it meets and reacts to their moods using its voice, arm and hand gestures, and changes in eye color to express itself. Pepper also ...

Earlier this week it was widely reported that Softbank’s friendly-faced almost-humanoid Pepper robot was not long for this world, as the Japanese company’s subsidiary in France that had been ...

FUKUOKA--Dancing robot dogs named Spot and Pepper humanoid robots have been cheering on the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks baseball team in the absence of flesh and blood fans and cheerleaders. The ...