https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/04/japan-train-robot-maintain-railway-lines

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West Japan Railway has introduced a 12-metre high robot mounted on a
truck to perform maintenance work on rails, including trimming tree
branches and painting.
[ ]
West Japan Railway has introduced a 12-metre high robot mounted on a
truck to perform maintenance work on rails, including trimming tree
branches and painting. Photograph: Reuters
View image in fullscreen
West Japan Railway has introduced a 12-metre high robot mounted on a
truck to perform maintenance work on rails, including trimming tree
branches and painting. Photograph: Reuters
Japan

Japan introduces enormous humanoid robot to maintain train lines

The 12-metre high machine has coke bottle eyes and a crude
Wall-E-like head, as well as large arms that can be fitted with
blades or paint brushes


Agence France-Presse

Thu 4 Jul 2024 01.05 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Jul 2024 13.49 EDT
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It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West
Japan Railway's new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more
sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.

 
'How can such a tiny woman drive a big truck?' Japan's labour
shortage forces it to rethink gender stereotypes
Read more

Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude,
disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes
mounted on a truck - which can drive on rails - will be put to use
for maintenance work on the company's network.

Its operator sits in a cockpit on the truck, "seeing" through the
robot's eyes via cameras and operating its powerful limbs and hands
remotely.

With a vertical reach of 12 metres (40ft), the machine can use
various attachments for its arms to carry objects as heavy as 40kg
(88lb), hold a brush to paint or use a chainsaw.

Japan's giant robot fixes railway wires.View image in fullscreen
Japan's giant robot fixes railway power lines. Photograph: Reuters

For now, the robot's primary task will focus on trimming tree
branches along rails and painting metal frames that hold cables above
trains, the company said.

The technology will help fill worker shortages in ageing Japan as
well as reduce accidents such as workers falling from high places or
suffering electric shocks, the company said.

"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, company president
Kazuaki Hasegawa told a recent press conference.

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