West Japan Railway’s newest employee is 40 feet tall, has sad WALL-E-like eyes, and looks like the final boss in a video game about a dystopian machine uprising.
Driving the news: The Japanese railway company started using a giant humanoid robot to carry out potentially dangerous tasks like trimming trees with a chainsaw and painting frames that hold up cables. It could reduce the workforce required for most tasks by 30%.
- A human worker remotely controls the robot — which doesn’t yet have a cute, humanizing name — with the help of goggles connected to cameras in the machine’s eyes.
Big picture: Japan is a global leader in using robots to help ease labour shortages as its population rapidly ages. Recent robot labour advancements include relaxing traffic laws to enable food delivery robots and the increased use of elder care robots at nursing homes.
Why it matters: Japan is far from the only country with age-related labour shortages (*cough* Canada). As nations struggle to fill jobs, especially in hard labour industries, robots could become a necessary tool to either assist existing workers or simply fill vacancies.—QH