Nestle’s Japanese customers will soon be able to get their caffeine fix from a robot, with the food giant announcing it will hire 1000 ’emotional’ humanoids as sales clerks across its Japanese stores.

Humanoid ‘Pepper’ will be rolled out at Nestle stores by the end of the year to help customers purchase coffee capsules and espresso machines.

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“From December, they will start selling coffee machines for us at big retail stores,” Nestle Japan spokeswoman Miki Kano said on Wednesday.

“We are sure that our customers will enjoy shopping and being entertained by robots.”

Pepper is already in use in telecommunications giant Softbank’s outlets, and has proved an effective marketing tool for the Japanese mobile carrier, delighting managers who put it to work collecting customer opinions.

The 120-centimetre tall robot, which moves on rollers and has what looks like a tablet computer strapped to its chest, was unveiled in June by SoftBank president Masayoshi Son.

He billed it as an “emotional” robot that understands “70 to 80 per cent of spontaneous conversations”.

Pepper is set to go on the market from February for about $US2000 ($A2165) apiece.

– with AAP