Japanese airline starts testing robot baggage handlers, and the early returns are not impressive
There's no question that robots are going to be coming for some folks' jobs sooner rather than later, and it looks like baggage handlers could be one of the first on the robo-chopping block.
Japan Airlines is going to start rolling out its humanoid robots to help with baggage at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.
Now, while I'm usually not one to celebrate something like this — I feel it's just one step closer to all of us having to pay our respects to robot overlords — I was excited about it.
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As soon as I saw that guy chucking guitars on the ground at LAX, I changed my tune on robots in this instance.
However, upon seeing what this robot can do when it comes to baggage handling, I think we've got quite a few years of humans throwing suitcases on the ground.
The early returns are simply not impressive.
Did... did it actually do anything? I mean, if waving at the luggage doesn't count.
As soon as I saw that humanoid robot take its first, wobbly steps, I knew that this was going to be wholly unremarkable.
I mean, I've seen more sure-footed newborn giraffes, and, fun fact, they fall around six feet to the ground when they're first born.
Hey, you'd be pretty d--- wobbly too if you had just fallen six feet out of a giraffe.
Before I'm impressed by this, I need to see it handle some actual luggage, and it doesn't look to my untrained, robot-judging eyes that it can.
Seriously. One slightly heavy Samsonite full of some tourists' Tokyo Disney souvenirs, and that thing is just going to tip over, or its arms will snap off.
And if it loses its arms, then what will it wave at the luggage, seeing as that's all it's good for?
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I hated that wave, by the way. I think they tried to cover up the fact that the robot is totally useless by making it do something cute.
I might try that move the next time my wife asks me to help her do something around the house. I'll just walk around all clumsy like, and then when she says something to me about "not helping," I'll just start waving.
She'd be like, "Aww... see he is helping... kind of."
So, while I think there's something to making robots handle our luggage full of way too much underwear than we could ever go through, given the length of the trip (admit it, we all do that), it seems like it still needs some work.