Nestle to use robot sales clerks

Nestle will use robots as sales clerks in its outlets selling coffee makers in Japan, an initiative that will later spread worldwide, a Nestle spokesperson confirmed to Efe Thursday.

Humanoid robot “Pepper” has been jointly developed by Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Mobile Corp and France's Aldebaran Robotics, to serve customers in a dozen stores from December onwards.

This will be the first time that Nestle will employ androids as sales clerks, Nestle spokesperson in Japan Miki Kanoh told Efe, adding that the company hopes to take this innovative idea to the rest of the world.Japan constitutes the largest market in the world for the Nescafe coffee machines and Nestle plans to use the robots in about 1,000 stores worldwide by the end of 2015. (Magyar Nermzet, MTI)