Robot autopsy shows Pepper's head may be replaceable
Don't worry, the gruesome image (above) of SoftBank's Pepper isn't part of Elon Musk's robot takedown plan. It's actually a teardown by Japanese website Nikkei showing exactly what makes the emotion sensing 'bot tick. The head came off the body easily enough, but Pepper probably won't get an "easily repairable" score as Nikkei's technicians had to drill to get it apart. Once it cracked the cranium, however, it confirmed that yes, Pepper has Intel inside -- an Atom processor, to be exact. The site theorizes that since the head detaches easily from the body, SoftBank might let users upgrade just by dropping in a new one with a different CPU.
Other Pepper organs aren't located where we have them -- its microphone "ears" are near the top of its head and its speakers are on the side, for instance. Meanwhile, one eye is a depth sensing camera that picks up infrared signals that are transmitted by the other eye. (The depth sensing camera used by Pepper is an ASUS part, by the way.) You can hit the source to see the rest of the parts and pieces, but if you shelled out the price of a compact car to get one, we certainly wouldn't try it at home.
