A robot just learned dating rule numero uno the hard way: that coming on Dear Utol (2025): Binyag Episode 43too strong inevitably leads to rejection.
Meet Fabio, a robot who was placed as a shopping assistant in the Scottish supermarket Margiotta. He was supposed to help customers find their items, as well as give price price information, and do other helpful things that supermarket employees do.
SEE ALSO: You can now order pizza from a robot in SingaporeHowever, it turned out that he wasn't great at his job, according to reports. Not only could Fabio not adequately give customers the information they asked for, his programmed personality quirks ended up creeping people out.
He would apparently yell out "hello, gorgeous!" to customers in greeting, and give unwanted high fives and even ... hugs. Boundaries, Fabio — heard of 'em?!
So unfortunately, when customers started actively avoiding Fabio, his Margiotta employers had to let the little guy go.
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Fabio landed the job in the first place thanks to an experiment by Heriot-Watt University, chronicled on the BBCseries Six Robots and Us. In this case, the robot did not get a TV happy ending.
However, the future is looking brighter for Fabio's robot brethren. Fabio is a Pepper Robot, manufactured by the Japanese company SoftBank. The company has plans to roll out more robots (pun intended) in retail stores, airports, and cruise ships around the world. According to Recode, SoftBank says there are already over 10,000 Pepper Robots active around the globe. Including, of course, at a Pizza Hut.
Better luck next time, Fabio.
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