PALO ALTO, Calif.—Turns out it’s really hard to interview an adorable interactive robot when she's stuck on a demo loop and other journalists are trying to interview her at the same time.

Nevertheless, being face-to-face with SoftBank Robotics’ new “social robot” named Pepper was exciting and a bit odd.

Over two years ago, Pepper made her (his? her? I’m going with her for now, even though its creators tell me you can apply whatever pronoun you like) debut as a helpful robot at SoftBank stores across Japan. The four-foot (1.2m) tall robot scoots around on treads and has articulable hands and fingers for providing culturally-specific social cues and gesticulations as a way to make humans more comfortable. The Japanese robot apparently bows, while the North American model can fist-bump. That wasn't part of the demo.

Right now, over 10,000 Pepper robots are in Japan and Europe. The two that rolled around Thursday in the b8ta showroom floor in Palo Alto are the very first ever in North America.

During the quick demo, Pepper demonstrated her ability to track movements—moving her head as I stepped from side to side—and her ability to detect smiles and glares. The iPad-style screen on her chest can show any needed visual information.

Unlike Siri, Pepper couldn’t answer basic questions, much less tell a joke. However, if I gave the prompted answer that she wanted to hear, I triggered a retelling of her origin story (Say: “story!”). I was impressed that she could pick out a command over the din of dozens of people moving about.

Like many other robots, Pepper is designed to replace humans in a task that can be dull. Think of a store clerk who has to answer the question “Where’s the restroom?” dozens of times per day. Pepper, by contrast, can do it with grace and aplomb, and she does it in over a dozen languages. (At the Thursday demo that Ars attended, the language options were not immediately available.)

Soon, SoftBank, the Japanese mobile phone giant, hopes that Pepper might even become a domestic personal assistant robot, not unlike Serge from, thespinoff series.

Steve Carlin, SoftBank’s vice president for marketing, put it this way: “We can imagine situations where you come down in the morning, and Pepper greets you and says, ‘Your route to work is clear, and don’t forget to bring an umbrella, it’s meant to rain today,’ and ‘I downloaded those three articles from The New York Times that you said you’d be interested in, shall I read them to you?’”

Carlin said that the company hasn’t announced Pepper’s price in North America, but that she would be in the “hundreds of dollars” per month range. (In Japan, Pepper retails for about $1,900.) He also said the company is looking toward something resembling an app store, and SoftBank wants developers to write new software for the frontier platform.

“Pepper will learn from the people that she interacts with and evolve accordingly,” said Omar Abdelwahed, the Head of Studio at SoftBank Robotics America.

But he noted that one Pepper unit does not share data with another. That means a Tokyo-based Pepper won’t know about my brief interaction with her Palo Alto cousin.

One Pepper unit will be on display at the b8ta store, 516 Bryant St. in Palo Alto, California, through Thursday, August 18.

Listing image by Cyrus Farivar