How robot avatars piloted by disabled people are changing Japan's work routine, while helping to solve its labour shortage
I SEE YOU
I am sitting in a cafe in Nihombashi on the edge of the financial district close to the Bank of Japan, having just stepped out of the crisp cold air of a Tokyo winter morning for a latte. Outside the cafe is nothing out of the ordinary being a typical financial district coffee shop with snacks, a light lunch menu and a list of fancy coffees. But, inside could not be more different - the shop's staff are made of white plastic.
The robot waiters, or avatars, that serve the cafe's customers are remotely piloted by disabled workers, living all over the country. It aims to create a more inclusive environment for disabled customers too, with carefully thought out wheelchair access, as well as helping with the local shortage of labour.
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Robot cafes and restaurants are not new, there are some gimmicky ones in Hong Kong and many in China, and Japan has one of the loudest and noisiest robot restaurants around in Shinjuku on the well-worn tourist trail, but this cafe is quiet, and as you would expect, relaxing and as far from a tourist attraction you can get.
DAWN cafe, an acronym for Diverse Avatar Working Network, is a coffee shop owned and operated by Ori Lab, a designer and manufacturer of OriHime avatar robots. The avatars, conceived by CEO Kentaro Yoshifuji, who as a child was immobile and unable to attend school though illness, found the endless staring at the ceiling haunted him as an adult and he wanted to do something about it.
After venturing into electric wheelchairs and winning national prizes for his designs, he focused on a concept communicator robot, OriHime, which today takes the form of a small desktop white plastic device with a head, eyes, something of a nose, an upper torso and two flipper type arms. It is equipped for two-way audio communication, and with a camera in the middle of its forehead, one way video. A larger model recently built, OriHime-D, is about the size of a six-year-old child and very similar in appearance to the now defunct SoftBank's AI Pepper robot, moving around on wheels.
Although initially designed as a tool to combat loneliness, OriHime is also having an impact on the choices available for disabled people to work remotely and hence the cafe. Yoshifuji's secretary, Yuta Banda, who works in the same office using a OriHime is one such employee, having been bed ridden since he was involved in a traffic accident at the age of four, he never physically attended school either.
HIMITSU WO SHIRITAI
The 'barista' robot in the cafe was the real AI deal, a 'Nextage' humanoid robot made by Kawada Robotics and used in factories assembling diverse products such as coin handlers, make-up and swiss watches. And now it makes coffee too under the watchful eye of a remote worker. But everyone else was 'piloted'.
Hollywood typically focuses on dystopian worlds overrun by robots, somehow in conflict with humans and trying to annihilate them, but this is very different as the avatars do not use artificial intelligence but the real stuff, as interacting with one of these machines is a direct connection to the human pilot and perhaps one of the reasons Pepper was something of a failure in the service industry when it appeared in many stores including clothing retailer Uniqlo. Often, it didn't really know what to do and as shoppers became bored of them, store owners gave up on the gimmick. In the case of DAWN cafe, its pilots know exactly what to do and they make you laugh.
So where could this go? The theme of piloted avatars was core to the storyline in the 2009 film 'Surrogates' starring Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike. In the story, most if society thrives through youthful robotic interpretations of themselves, while the 'pilot' ages ungracefully hidden from each other and never to meet in their homes. Driven from a pilot chair, the fictional devices exchanged sensory information with the avatar; sight, sound, touch, and the avatars were able to walk, run, leap - navigating autonomously.
Perhaps this is a future view of how telepresence develops or sidesteps the need for artificial intelligence in robotics - which we inherently are not keen on in case they run amok. The technology could help where a physical presence is restricted or difficult. Avatars can offer an alternative way of visiting places or attending meetings when you can't travel or physically be there. At an extreme, exploration of difficult to get to places, such as in space on other planets.
But, for down to earth applications, they would be for remote working, and I suspect this is the route Elon Musk and Tesla are taking with plans for humanoid robots using its self-driving car technology, after all his cars are simply piloted robots. Other robot manufacturers may be well advised to do the same and investigate piloted avatars as product lines.
MATA AU HI MADE
As for Ory Labs and OriHime, the devices are currently available to rent, and as similar products come to market you may in the future be able to pop into an electronics store to buy one or something similar.
In the meantime, I enjoyed my perfectly made latte and toasted tuna melt and the quiet environment the cafe with its very calming atmosphere and its very pleasant staff, one of which raised a white plastic arm to wave me goodbye.
Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
