Japan Airlines tests having robots instead of humans handle travelers’ luggage
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That video is so deeply unimpressive that it almost seems like a parody making fun of humanoid robots. They're gonna have to do A LOT better to be useful.
And, to be clear, I actually don't hate the idea, like, Denver tried to automate baggage handling a couple decades ago (with regular robots) and it was a disaster, but the idea itself has always seemed sound to me.
And, to be clear, I actually don't hate the idea, like, Denver tried to automate baggage handling a couple decades ago (with regular robots) and it was a disaster, but the idea itself has always seemed sound to me.
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Narita Airport is run by some of the smartest guys I know, and I am extremely surprised they are doing this. I saw the latest and greatest robots late last year and they were definitely not capable enough to be working in a busy airport environment.
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I can see why they'd use humanoid robots in baggage handling -- it's a drop-in replacement for human baggage handlers, using the same infrastructure and the ability to easily swap back out for humans.
But I don't get the cleaning use-case: why not use a robot custom designed to clean the surfaces? Humanoid form factor seems like an awkward one for cleaning the inside of an airplane -- just think of how awkward it is to manage it just as a passenger!
But I don't get the cleaning use-case: why not use a robot custom designed to clean the surfaces? Humanoid form factor seems like an awkward one for cleaning the inside of an airplane -- just think of how awkward it is to manage it just as a passenger!
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Or maybe Japan could, you know, allow more immigration and better protect immigrant human rights.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Spent some time over there.... if anyone can get it done / make it work efficiently (maybe a hybrid team of robots and humans), it's the Japanese.
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People shortage.
This was posted last week:
https://soranews24.com/2026/04/24/j...d-up-its-five-year-visa-quota-in-record-time/
The labour shortage has become so dire that instead of having a real person advertise the hit beverage Asahi Future Lemon, that Sephiroth (yes, THE Sephiroth) is doing so!
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This reminds me of that scene in Phantom Menace, where the one-eyed worker droid gets sucked into Ben Quadrinaros's jet engines.
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The current Japanese government got elected on an anti-immigration/anti-foreigner platform (among other far-right policy agendas).
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Watching that clip it's a relief to know, should we ever have a zombie apocalypse, that there are jobs out there for the slow, shuffling undead to literally fall into.
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And reform their abusive work culture that puts work above all else including starting a family and spending time with them. Seriously, the whole salaryman sleeping in capsule hotel thing is just dystopian and depressing
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They tried to get the guy in the robot costume from the Tesla demo but he was too expensive so they had to use real robots instead.
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I mean... this is the kind of job that robots should definitely be doing.
Kids grow up dreaming about being carpenters, pilots, teachers, gardeners, garbage truck crew... but I don't know a single kid who dreams about becoming a senior accountant or luggage handler.
Of course, it would be nice if they would, after implementation, pass the cost savings to the passengers and broader society but this is, for me, the old dream of having the robots do the tough work for us.
Kids grow up dreaming about being carpenters, pilots, teachers, gardeners, garbage truck crew... but I don't know a single kid who dreams about becoming a senior accountant or luggage handler.
Of course, it would be nice if they would, after implementation, pass the cost savings to the passengers and broader society but this is, for me, the old dream of having the robots do the tough work for us.
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Imagine time travelling back to the 80s and telling somebody that Japan would be buying robots from China...
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I dream of becoming a senior accountant. Wine and dine corporate clients all day while playing golf.
Sci-Fi promised AI/robotics would automate our back-breaking physical labor. Instead we automated our cushy desk jobs and soul fulfilling art.
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I agree that Japan could do more, but they have quietly been allowing more immigration over the last few years, roughly doubling the number of resident immigrants over the last 10 years from ~2 to ~4 million. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Japan#/media/File:Foreign_residents_in_Japan_2023.png)
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My only concern is if they do entirely away with humans in the luggage handling chain. When things work properly a robot should be a fine replacement of manual labor in a job like this. But as soon as something goes wrong...
A few months ago my wife and I flew on one of the larger airlines that sends you text updates for pretty much every step along the way that your luggage takes. I got a text that one of our bags was checked in, then another text that it was loaded onto the aircraft. At the destination I got a text that it was unloaded, then another that it was loaded onto the baggage claim conveyor belt. 15 minutes later the baggage claim was empty and the belt stopped with no sign of our bag. So we went over to the lost & found and showed them the texts. The person at the counter grabbed a radio and called to somebody in the baggage area. A minute or so later they called back to say that they saw our bag had fallen off one of the conveyor belts and it would take them a few minutes to retrieve it. Five minutes later we had the bag in our possession again.
I sincerely hope they have enough flesh-and-blood people still working to not only manage those robots but to also take care of the edge cases like this that are bound to crop up on a regular basis. And that means more than just one guy staring at a computer screen watching what the robots are doing, and replacing the occasional broken appendage.
A few months ago my wife and I flew on one of the larger airlines that sends you text updates for pretty much every step along the way that your luggage takes. I got a text that one of our bags was checked in, then another text that it was loaded onto the aircraft. At the destination I got a text that it was unloaded, then another that it was loaded onto the baggage claim conveyor belt. 15 minutes later the baggage claim was empty and the belt stopped with no sign of our bag. So we went over to the lost & found and showed them the texts. The person at the counter grabbed a radio and called to somebody in the baggage area. A minute or so later they called back to say that they saw our bag had fallen off one of the conveyor belts and it would take them a few minutes to retrieve it. Five minutes later we had the bag in our possession again.
I sincerely hope they have enough flesh-and-blood people still working to not only manage those robots but to also take care of the edge cases like this that are bound to crop up on a regular basis. And that means more than just one guy staring at a computer screen watching what the robots are doing, and replacing the occasional broken appendage.
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People don't want to have babies any more. Japan was an early leader in this trend. No babies, soon no young adults to load and unload planes.
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Nobody wants to talk about it,
But countries like S Korea and Japan will cease to exist as we know it this century.
Their population collpases are well underway.
But countries like S Korea and Japan will cease to exist as we know it this century.
Their population collpases are well underway.
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I think this goes to the big tradeoff between humanoid and specialized robots. We build a lot of infrastructure to be accessed / maintained by humans, so a humanoid robot can be used there. But, the human form factor is seldom the best choice for any one activity. But, for something like luggage handling or plane cleaning, the activity is very 'bursty' – a specialized plane cleaning or luggage hauling robot might be idle for 90+% of the day. But, theoretically, a generic humanoid robot could be repurposed to different tasks throughout the day – clean the plane, then tidy up the terminal, then lug some luggage, etc..
I have no idea what the best balance is, and I suspect this airport exercise is an experiment to figure out what actually works well and where the generic vs. specialized tradeoff point is.
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Looking at how bad society seems to be headed...dunno if the people I've met who all have zero interest in kids are that crazy afterall...
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That video has "two year old helping dada move the couch" vibes, but with none of the adorable connotations.
Japan is indeed going through a labor shortage, largely attributable to its aging population and falling birth rate. Japan is also a culture that highly values cultural cohesion and homogeneity and is more than a bit supremacist in its views of many neighboring cultures, so instead of a work visa program or something, they're dicking around with robots that just get in the way and feebly bonk their manipulators against objects they don't have the stability or power to actually move.
The more degrees of freedom you give a robot, the larger the number of discrete tasks it does in a workflow, the more it costs, and I gather the multiplication is by orders of magnitude. My feeling is that this experiment will return the same conclusion it usually does, which is that if you want a robot to do things one robot doing one thing, preferably bolted to the ground, is going to be the cheapest, most accurate/precise way to make that happen.
Japan is indeed going through a labor shortage, largely attributable to its aging population and falling birth rate. Japan is also a culture that highly values cultural cohesion and homogeneity and is more than a bit supremacist in its views of many neighboring cultures, so instead of a work visa program or something, they're dicking around with robots that just get in the way and feebly bonk their manipulators against objects they don't have the stability or power to actually move.
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I think that mostly comes down to the fact that a humanoid robot is more versatile than a specialized non humanoid robot. So while probably more expensive and more complicated to design, once you have a humanoid robot that is good enough that it can do a wide range of tasks that would otherwise be done by a human the question becomes, do you have a specialized workflow big enough to justify the cost of designing a specialized robot to use instead of a humanoid one?
For something well defined and repetitive like assembly line factory robots, it definitely makes sense to go with the specialized non humanoid robot. The specialized robot almost certainly does it faster, better, and cheaper. But is the use case of cleaning inside an airplane big enough to justify the upfront cost of a specialized robot when a more general purpose humanoid robot could do that plus pretty much anything else you want it to do? Probably not.
Blue collar/manual labor tasks are all designed around the human form factor because most of them are done by humans. So a humanoid robot is the most obvious replacement for all but the highest value tasks. I'm not impressed with any of the humanoid robots I've seen yet but they'll keep improving. Eventually you can buy your own Rosie the robot to clean your house for you, but not today.
There may also be cases where the cheapest robot you can get that is capable of doing the job is more expensive than just paying a human worker minimum wage to do the same task. It's not like janitors and maids command a huge salary that you're desperate to replace. Would you really rather pay $250k up front plus ongoing maintenance costs for a robot janitor instead of paying a human minimum wage? Will they cost that much? No idea. Maybe more, maybe less. I assume they'll be expensive initially and eventually come down in cost. But early models will probably be more expensive than human labor.
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I agree, I think that plays a large role in the population crisis that their politicians barely are willing to acknowledge. There's also all these expectations of off clock behaviors that are expected like drinking and eating with the management after work several times a week, or under reporting the hours actually worked so that you look more efficient for the time you've worked.
Also, how much are these luggage handling positions being paid? I've seen articles about how many animators and manga writers struggle with burning out and trying to make ends meet while keeping up with what is demanded and putting in exorbitant hours. If luggage handling paid better, I don't think there'd be an issue filling positions.
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In theory. Only in theory.
This is the thing that I keep telling people who are super geeked about Optimus. If you think you want an Optimus to do random household chores, you can hire a human worker to do that for you right now, today. You will pay no more for that person's labor than you would for a robot lease/purchase and subscription to whatever AI service will run it. That person will be more creative, intelligent, trainable, and independent than the robot is ever likely to be. So if that's a real need for you.....hire someone to do it.
And if you can't, you aren't in the market for an Optimus either.
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Wow, so you've been posting to Ars since you were born or even from womb. =))))))))))
You are most likely not a child anymore, and I find equally unlikely that you knew what accountants were at age<10.
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Honestly, though, I think we dream of cushy jobs to escape back-breaking jobs just because they pay so poorly.
I bet if city gardeners were well paid, offering the same amount of money to sit the whole day in front of Excel vs working a garden for 6h, many if not most people would elect working the garden.
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Maybe humanoid isn't the optimal form for this work, have they tried conveyor-belt-oid robots?
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People will work the shittiest jobs in the world so long as the pay is proportional. There's no such thing as a job no one wants to do, just ones employers are not willing/unable to pay for.
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I don't think that there are any airports larger than Haneda in Japan.
At least if "largest" would be busiest, but given it has four runways, and I'm not sure there are any others with even three, it's probably has the largest area as well.
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FWIW, JAL is the only airline I've flown that actively sends someone out to the baggage area to locate you when there's a baggage issue.
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Tribunus Militum
And collect taxes from immigrant workers, to help pay for public services such as care for an aging population, instead of handing out tax breaks to corporations investing in robots? Nah, that's crazy talk.
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Your post highlights a problem that is endemic in our modern world. It is great to have apps, ATM machines, web pages, that allow us to do lots of things that used to require standing in lines or visiting banks or company offices. Great, when it works, that is. But the corollary is not so great. When the systems break, there is often no one to turn to to fix it. Hours spent on hold with a telephone system, if there is a phone number at all, then a frustrating conversation with a call-center worker who cannot fix it.
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