If you haven't eaten at a Japanese Pizza Hut or had surgery at a Belgian hospital recently, then you probably haven't had the pleasure of meeting Pepper, a four-foot-tall, 62-pound humanoid robot.

But Americans now have their chance. Pepper will be in residence at B8ta, a futuristic technology store in Palo Alto, Calif., until Aug. 18. When PCMag stopped by for a tour this week, Pepper's creators—Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank—gushed over her ability to sense moods, play with children, and even narrate video games.

Upon first glance, Pepper doesn't seem like much. Not only is she diminutive, but she has just a head, arms, and torso; there's little more than a plastic bulge where her legs should be, making her look a bit like a mermaid without a fin. That's intentional, SoftBank Vice President Steve Carlin explained.

"Pepper understands how to create an empathetic bond" with humans, he said, something that isn't possible if she were human-sized, since she'd appear scary to children and threatening to adults.

To create that bond, Softbank bestowed Pepper with some relatively simple technology: a 3D camera, three wheels for mobility, joints that can move 17 different ways, and a 12-hour battery. She also wears a small tablet on her chest, powered by Softbank's custom OS, to play video and allow for more complex human interactions.

Pepper takes a three-step approach to harnessing her electronic innards—a process that Softbank designer Omar Abdelwahed referred to as "zones of recognition." She begins by scanning the room with her 3D camera to identify any humans present—a task she performed remarkably well given the dozen or so journalists who were hiding behind their cameras during our demo.

She then moves on to facial recognition. The goal is to lock on to someone's face and follow it wherever the person might move, so that Pepper always appears to be listening and attentive. The final step is mood detection: If Pepper is telling a story and you appear bored, she'll stop. If you're angry or upset, she's programmed to console you.

The rest of what makes Pepper tick—including some of the software that powers her actions—is up to her buyer. Nearly anything is possible, from complicated modifications that enable her to be a surgical assistant to relatively simple artificial intelligence that lets her perform customer service functions.

"We just want to partner with the best AI companies," said Abdelwahed, who's in charge of Softbank's San Francisco design studio. Even as Pepper greets curious shoppers at B8ta this week, Abdelwahed and Carlin are busy hammering out partnerships with IBM's Watson, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google.

They're also supporting the efforts of Android developers playing around with the Pepper software developers' kit, announced in May. The SDK includes everything developers need to create custom apps for Pepper, including a virtual model of the robot itself, which works similarly to an emulator for the Android operating system.

Abdelwahed hinted at Pepper's usefulness for home automation, but said he's most excited about her storytelling abilities. He sees her acting as a combination of a real-world and virtual guide in open-world and choose-your-own adventure games.

To help inspire developers, Softbank is also hosting a workshop on Aug. 16, where it hopes to sell them on the idea of Pepper as a platform, just as Amazon is trying to do with its Alexa skills.

If you're dying to meet Pepper but you're not an app developer and you can't make it to California by next Thursday, it might be months or even years before you have the pleasure. Softbank doesn't have any immediate plans to sell Pepper to US consumers, and expects her to show up in some retail and commercial applications by the end of the year, at the earliest.