Inspired by the "Transformer" toys, the electric vehicle, called Earth-1, was designed by Kunio Okawara, famous in Japan as the artist behind the long-running popular robot anime 'Gundam'.

he met "Pepper": a so-called "companion robot" that can read human emotions. Yusuke Abe, a developer at SoftBank robotics, explained what Pepper could do, and why it was proving popular in Japan.