A kangaroo-inspired robot, called Model-T, has been stocking food on shelves at FamilyMart, a Japanese convenience store. That’s right, this 7-foot-tall robot by Telexistence hopes to start a wave of retail automation. The goal is to use these robot workers at 20 stores around Tokyo by 2022 with people operating them remotely at first until the machines’ artificial intelligence (AI) can learn to mimic human movements.
The good thing is that FamilyMart can employ remote operators for these robots from anywhere in the world. So far, the company has received funding from technology investment company SoftBank Group, cell phone service operator KDDI and Airbus Ventures, the venture capital arm of European aircraft maker Airbus SE.
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It advances the scope and scale of human existence. There are about 1.6 million people in Japan, who for various reasons are not active in the workforce,” said Jin Tomioka, Telexistence chief executive, as he explained how its technology lets people sense as well as experience places other than where they are.
