A new café
recently opened in Tokyo is entirely staffed by robots controlled by disabled
people remotely. Contrary to the negative side of automation, the café creates
jobs for people with severe debilitating conditions like amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS) and spinal cord injuries.
Named
Diverse Avatar Working Network) ver.β (DAWN), the café was launched as a joint
project between Ory Lab, which develops the robots, Nippon Foundation, and ANA
Holdings. The robots serving in the café is OriHime-D–a 4-foot-tall, altogether
robot that moves, look around, handles objects, and speak with patrons at
Tokyo’s Café. It has a built-in camera, a microphone and a speaker and can
remotely control from a smartphone or a PC using the Internet.
Joysticks, blow
tubes, or just the movements of the eye easily control the robots to serve
coffee and intermingle with the customers. The disabled person or other people
who cannot get out of home can earn money comfortably working from home or
nursing home.
Currently,
there is a staff of 10 people all working remotely from home and get paid 1,000
yen (US$8.80) an hour (a standard wage for part-time work in Japan).
The café was
a pilot project for a temporary period and was funded by crowdfunding drive
which doubled its funding goal. If the funds are made available on a regular
basis, it is hoped that a full-fledged Dawn will open in 2020.
Here is a promo
video to give a glimpse of how the concept works
A more
realistic demonstration of how a operator controls the robot
A video of
the opening ceremony
