West Japan Railway has begun using a giant humanoid robot for line maintenance, tree trimming, and even painting metal frames. It does require a human operator to sit in a cockpit on the truck, using the robot’s eyes via cameras for visuals while operating its powerful limbs and hands remotely.
The robot has a 40-foot vertical reach and can use various attachments on its arms to carry objects as heavy as 88-pounds. Need to paint a metal frame or even a sign? Simply install the brush attachment. Trimming trees would require the chainsaw attachment, but the possibilities have not yet been fully explored.
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In the future, we hope to use machines for all kinds of maintenance operations of our infrastructure,” and this should provide a case study for how to deal with the labour shortage,” said Kazuaki Hasegawa, West Japan Railway President.
