The more that companies are turning to technology solutions - the two biggest convenience store franchises in Japan, FamilyMart and Cicero.
This week, the robot's first convenience store Thomas explained in Tokyo. FamilyMart trialled the robots same month, and he says what he thinks is working at 20 of its stores by 2022.
The bonds are deploying a robot, named T-Model, developed by a Japanese startup Telexistence. The products of cubits, and the height in the height, in a short time the robot moves around the organs of sensation of this the judgment seat of kitted out with a camera and microphones. Using three "fingers" on each of their two hands can stock the shelves with products such as bottled drinks in cans and bowls of rice.
"Large, and pick and place variety of subjects, different shapes and sizes, in different places," Matt Komatsu, capital and business to business development Telexistence, tells CNN Business.
remote control
The Model T-robot - named after the automobile accident that Ford pioneered the assembly line production in the early 20th century - is controlled by staff at the shop. A human "pilot" wears virtual reality (VR) developers special gloves will not let them "feel" in the products of their hands holding the robot is. Music and microphones to communicate with the supply permit.
VR systems and robots Telexistence do not want to sell directly to stores, but will provide them a fee. That would not be cost-competitive with the price of labor and human.
In teaching, the robot could be controlled from anywhere in the world, says Komatsu. By the FamilyMart store in Tokyo to the judgment in August, the robot is operated from the ship's captain and five thousand miles around the terminal in the office of the Telexistence VR.
This makes it easier to offer lower recruitment to overseas locations and the potential for hiring labor costs, says Komatsu. He adds that he is controlling the robot and just need skilled pilots.
So that the workers, too, could operate stores in the minority of cases. "A remote control robot allows for one person to be a need for more stores," says Satoru Yoshizawa, a representative of FamilyMart.
Many of the people in the stores Yoshizawa especially difficult to find people to hire three to five hours a day for a very short period of shelf stacking. When a robot is to use one operator can work with many stores will focus on the need to hire men for cash, a book says.
Cicero facing the same problem. "We are trying to solve the labor shortage in some of our stores and through this experiment to examine how the robots will help to us," Mochimaru Saint, of Cicero's corporate communications division, tells CNN Business.
If effective, it proves that says that the more we will consider it rolled out the robots from its branches.
He certainly Hong, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, which tells CNN Business relay is unlikely to rise enough to compensate for the time when the aging of the population.
Embrace "lorem saving work," Hong said part of the solution, but it adds hurdles to overcome the widespread adoption of the robots. Japan will need to work out in the "legal framework for the use of such a technology of today's society, for men from one side," she said, including consumer protection and the protection of the information.
He adds that it is "strong and effective social nets put in to minimize the negative impacts well.
19, Covid accelerating automation
However, the Model T-robot still has to have the same way as a standard in man. Also on the shelf robot is one of eight people when it comes around the same times. So far, it can be packaged in the way it is treated it is hot a lot, a bake-house, not paid to the items or the fruit and vegetables.
Telexistence who launched, in 2017, it was working to improve his limitations. Using AI, hopes to automatically copy the movements of human society as a robot to teach the pilot can operate without it.