SoftBank is filling Japan's fascination of robots with a new "empathetic robot" called Pepper, which will be available to customers in Japan in the second half of this year.

Pepper is a helper robot for the most part. It runs on wheels and lacks any emotion on the face -- making it clear it;s a robot and not a human -- unlike the other Japanese robot project.

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SoftBank will work with IBM's super artificial intelligence platform called Watson, which will be in-built into Pepper to function as its brain. Watson is capable of learning from experience rather than being programmed to understand things from the get-go.

This evolution of the robot brain allows it to become more accustomed to one use and create a more personal connection with them. Watson could help Japanese robot buyers become more understanding of the future of robots, outside of simple help bots.

SoftBank has also created a new partnership to sell Watson in Japan. Watson will be able to answer customer support calls and do other intelligence tasks for a company.

Pepper robot will be available for $1,700 to start off with, but SoftBank doesn't see any real profitability in robots until 30 years. SoftBank  claims this is just to get the market off the ground.

The robot market is still in its very early stages despite huge advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. We're still a long way from a utopian future where robots do all the housework.

SoftBank has started investing more rapidly into other markets. It acquired Sprint in 2014 for $21.6 billion. It also invested rapidly in Alibaba and Indian ventures last year.

TagsSoftBank, Watson, Robots