This website and blog support the Virtual Humans book by David Burden and Maggi Savin-Baden published by Taylor & Francis in February 2019. Here you can find links to images, videos, papers, articles and application resources related to the topics covered by the book, and a blog maintained by the authors to track the development of this fascinating and vitally important topic.
Pepper the robot makes parliamentary "appearance"
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/10/pepper-the-robot-questioned-by-house-of-commons-select-committee-on-ai/
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (latterly the IEE) really ought to know better than this. Reading the article it really sounds like Pepper is a "clever" and "articulate" virtual human, rather than effectively (in this instance) a humanoid style loudspeaker. Pepper was also at the Big Question TV debate I was at, and we had to keep reshooting as even the tech to send the single command to say a line kept failing! There is some nice stuff being done with Pepper, and particularly with some of the other robot-human engagement research at Middlesex University, but presenting it in situations like this, and with coverage like this (as with Sophia and the UN presentation and getting "citizenship") really confuses expectations of what AI and virtual humans and actually really capable right now.
Rant over!