Japanese company shows Pepper robot with software for performing funeral rituals

The Japanese company Nissei Eco has shown a robot at a trade fair that, thanks to software, is able to perform rituals for Buddhist funerals. Hiring a robot would be much cheaper than hiring a human priest.

Nissei Eco created the software for Pepper, a humanoid robot presented by the Japanese provider Softbank in 2014. The Japanese branch of Yahoo wrote last week that the robot would be at the Life Ending Industry Expo in the Japanese capital Tokyo and this week the robot can be admired there.

According to the company, the robot is necessary because it is cheaper to have the rituals performed by Pepper than by a human priest. The cost of hiring the robot would be a quarter of that of a human.

Nissei Eco created the software for Pepper, which allows third-party applications. As far as we know, the robot has not yet been hired for a funeral.