Karel and Karel (Pepper)

Human-machine communication in the most natural form needs a human-like partner on the machine side. The Natural Language Processing Centre at the Faculty of Informatics led by Karel Pala plans to develop such interface using a corresponding hardware device, a communicating robot. In this paper, we present the history of the quest for such robotic team member ranging from self-made Johnny 5 to the current humanoid robot Pepper by the Softbank Robotics company. We concentrate on the latest works related to the Pepper socialbots and the NLP Centre plans regarding the corresponding research and education projects.