A new robot knows your emotions

Pepper is the first robot who knows what mood you're in, and can change his behaviour accordingly.

The robot, developed by Japanese company Softbank, uses sensors to read your mood and will be released next year for under US$2,000.

Pepper was introduced to the world last week, and marks a historic moment in robot design.

The 1.2m, 28kg humanoid robot gets feedback about our moods via facial-recognition technology, cameras, audio records and sensors in its head, CNN reports. 

And instead of being programmed, Pepper learns how to behave over time to make you happy. Their feedback is also uploaded to cloud storage so other units can modify their behaviour accordingly.

The rolling robot can also speak in 17 languages.

The inventors imagine Pepper will be useful as a household robot, but there's no word on whether it'll be for sale outside Japan as yet.