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The story
On September 4, JR East announced it will run a trial of a “mobile trash can robot” on weekdays from September 8 to November 20, operating in the underground concourse inside the ticket gates at Shinjuku Station. The robot chosen is an autonomous delivery robot made by U.S.-based Cartken, with operations handled by Mitsubishi Electric and Melco Mobility Solutions; its body will be wrapped in a design featuring the station’s mascot character, “Shinjukuma.” On 5ch, reactions ranged widely — surprise that it isn’t Japanese-made, security worries about someone planting an explosive inside it, and frustration over the broader trend of trash cans disappearing from stations.
On September 4, JR East announced it will conduct a trial of a “mobile trash can robot” in the underground concourse inside the ticket gates at Shinjuku Station. The trial runs on weekdays from September 8 to November 20, with the robot operating autonomously from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., patrolling the concourse and collecting trash.
The robot is an indoor/outdoor-capable autonomous delivery robot developed by U.S. company Cartken, with operations handled by Mitsubishi Electric and Melco Mobility Solutions.
Its body will be wrapped with a design of Shinjuku Station’s mascot character “Shinjukuma,” and it will patrol the areas inside the East, West, Central East, and Central West ticket gates.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The reason American robotics and Chinese semiconductor development move so fast is that those countries invest enough in R&D.
In Japan's national budget settlement for fiscal 2021:
Tax and stamp revenue was about ¥64 trillion, while social-security-related spending was about ¥55 trillion.
In other words, 86% of tax and stamp revenue goes toward social security.
A third of Japan's population is elderly (65+) and living on social security, and once you factor in the disabled and minors, it's basically two people supporting the life of one elderly person.
So much of the budget gets eaten up by social security that there's nothing left to invest in things like academic R&D that create tomorrow's added value.
What Japan needs right now is to get people working who could work — now that healthy life expectancy has gone up — but currently don't, cut social security spending accordingly, and redirect that money into R&D so that added value actually gets generated domestically.
"Healthy life expectancy has gone up," lol.
Make old people like that work and productivity just drops — their work quality won't hold up.
Would you want to ride a bus or plane driven by an 80-year-old?
Isn't it fine to just leave it lying around somewhere — someone will pick it up, right?
Perfectly put, lol.
It's basically a trash can that runs away from you.
It'll just drive itself to the nearest police box.
Catch the culprit's face on video and go straight to the police box!
That's because it's recognized you as trash.
Things used to work fine without that.
Wonder whose fault that is.
The whole country should do that.
Well, of course that happens when you cut back on trash cans.
Why outsource it?
This is exactly the kind of thing that holds us back, seriously.
Probably because there's no Japanese-made option?
Wonder if there was some kind of problem with it.
This one looks cooler, honestly.
Never once saw it in action.
Even the ones next to vending machines are starting to vanish.
That's because it's meant for empty drink containers, but people keep dumping other trash in it.
Why does it need to move around!?
Because it cuts down on the hassle of managing hazardous items and illegal dumping compared to setting up multiple fixed trash cans.
that had a trash-can robot with a built-in automatic incinerator.
they don't mess with them or smash them.
The cat-ear maid robots at Gusto (a family restaurant chain) have had it pretty rough though.
Wouldn't mopping the normal way get them shinier?
As a customer, I don't really need the floor to shine.
Clean is nice to have, but as long as it's not dirty that's fine — what matters more is that it's cheap.
If people just keep saying "this is in the way" or "this is pointless," Japanese industry won't grow at all and will keep falling further behind other countries.
If manufacturers just build things in the lab that nobody ever uses, the research stops being fun for them too.
This one's American-made.
All it does is feed data so American AI learns and gets even smarter.
It's American-made, you know.
There's clearly not enough.
Trash cans are high-risk, so the trend is only ever going to be toward fewer of them.
I'm sick of hearing "cost cutting" as the excuse.
If terrorism's really the worry, every country on earth would be covered in trash-can terror attacks.
You mean the Aum Shinrikyo attacks?
That group's pretty much defunct now though.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The disappearance of trash cans from stations in the greater Tokyo area traces back to the Tokyo subway sarin attack, after which placing trash cans inside stations was curtailed as a countermeasure against explosives and suspicious objects. Introducing a “mobile” version this time is seen as a judgment call that it’s easier to manage than simply installing more fixed bins. In the thread, some users who knew that Mitsubishi Electric had run its own cleaning robot at the Osaka-Kansai Expo were split over why an American-made Cartken robot was chosen this time instead. While the operators are Mitsubishi Electric and Melco Mobility Solutions, the robot itself is American-made — which is what fueled the surprised comments about it “not being made in Japan.”
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “A “Trash Can Robot” Appears at Shinjuku Station, Automatically Patrols Inside the Ticket Gates — JR East Runs Trial“.
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