Japanese telecommunications corporation SoftBank and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group plan to start selling a robot called Pepper on June 20. The $1,600 robots will be manufactured by Foxconn Technology Group of Taiwan. Alibaba and Foxconn are investing for 20 percent stakes each in the joint venture, while SoftBank will hold 60 percent. SoftBank envisions Pepper “as a companion for the elderly, a teacher of schoolchildren and an assistant in retail shops and offices,” notes The Wall Street Journal. Originally designed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French subsidiary of SoftBank, Pepper can read body language, human voices and facial expressions. There are already about 200 free apps for the robot.