911 for humanoids: Japan debuts first-ever ‘robot ambulance’ to provide on-site repairs

Japanese tech giant GMO Internet Group (GMO Air) has just unveiled what has been dubbed Japan’s first “robot ambulance.” Effectively a kind of roadside assistance for humanoid robots, the new vehicle will soon be put to work on the streets of Tokyo. The specially equipped van is designed to carry engineers, repair equipment, replacement parts, and a spare humanoid robot to sites when and where needed. “The humanoid ‘ambulance’ carries the replacement humanoid to the site and replaces it with the damaged humanoid,” explained Shota Takizawa, an engineer at GMO Air. The idea would be that if the “ambulance” can’t effect a repair on site, the robot can either be ferried back to a “repair base” with the replacement acting like a “courtesy car” robot for the customer. Importantly, the van isn’t autonomous, and it isn’t a robot repairing another robot by itself, making it an interesting blend of old and new. To imagine it in action, consider a hotel with two humanoid cleaning “staff” or a warehouse with humanoid “workers.” If one of these robots breaks down at the start of the working day, then the customer would lose several days of service if the robot is sent back to GMO Air for repairs. Tokyo to get nation’s first “robot ambulance” The new service will effectively compress the repair timeline by bringing engineers and parts to the customer on site. These engineers will then diagnose the problem on site, repair it if possible, or leave another robot as they take the old one away to fix. That’s actually quite a sensible service model if humanoids become common. Once businesses depend upon them to perform work, uptime, field maintenance, spare-parts logistics and replacement machines become important. It’s exactly the kind of ecosystem that developed around cars, industrial machinery, aircraft and IT hardware. With this new vehicle, GMO is imagining a future where humanoid robots are doing commercially important jobs in factories, shops, offices, warehouses, etc. The problem is that if a £50k–£100k-ish robot breaks down, you don’t necessarily want to ship it back to a service center and leave the customer’s operation without it for days. Roadside assistance for humanoid robots According to GMO Air, the concept was borne out of its experience with disruptions when damaged robots needed to be sent away for repair. “Learning from that experience, we came up with the idea of providing replacement humanoids,” Tomohiro Uchida, CEO of GMO Air, said.“When humanoids become more popular, this kind of service will be needed,” Takizawa added. At present, there is just a single “ambulance” available at GMO Air’s Tokyo headquarters. But they add that they plan to add many more vehicles in the future if customer demand justifies it. Presently, the singular vehicle is a demonstration/pilot of a field-support business GMO thinks may be necessary as humanoid deployment increases. Its unveiling also comes amidst growing competition between nations for humanoid robot development, especially in the US and China. Japan’s government, for its part, has recently set a target of 10 million robots to be in service by 2040 across multiple industries from healthcare to manufacturing. If anything remotely approaching that scale happens, mundane stuff like “Who comes out when my robot’s left knee actuator craps itself?” could become a surprisingly large industry. Get the latest in engineering, tech, space & science - delivered daily to your inbox.Christopher graduated from Cardiff University in 2004 with a Masters Degree in Geology. Since then, he has worked exclusively within the Built Environment, Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Consultancy industries. He is a qualified and accredited Energy Consultant, Green Deal Assessor and Practitioner member of IEMA. Chris’s main interests range from Science and Engineering, Military and Ancient History to Politics and Philosophy.