In Tokyo, a cafe is putting a very human face on robots.
At Dawn Avatar Robot Cafe, diners are served by robots with green light-up eyes. The robots are not controlled by AI or computer programming. Disabled workers operate them from home.
The cafe grew out of founder Ory Yoshifuji’s own experience. As a child, he spent three and a half years quarantined at home with an illness that kept him from going to school or seeing friends.
“I wondered,” Yoshifuji told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “‘Why couldn’t I have a second body?’”
He later recovered, studied robotics in college, started Ory Laboratory and created the remote-control OriHime robot. After a series of pop-up cafe experiments, he opened a permanent location in 2021.
“We’ve managed to create a situation where people, even if they can’t physically move around much, can still participate as members of society and as productive members of the workforce,” he told the ABC.
There are now about 100 workers, known as pilots. They work from home computers, using remote controls to move through the cafe and speak directly with customers.
“Every word, every head tilt, every order taken, that’s a real human controlling them in real time,” tech influencer Evie Parker said in a recent vlog from the cafe. “The pilots of these robots are people with ALS, spinal cord injuries … conditions that keep them home. And this lets them work, earn paychecks, talk to strangers, have a normal everyday shift.”
One pilot, Naoki, has severe heart failure and is waiting for a heart transplant. He said he had been told to stop working.
“I retreated into my shell,” he said in a video.
He said working at Dawn Cafe changed that.
“My first impression was that I am able to return to society,” Naoki said. “Now that I work like this, the joy of it is more prominent. I enjoy my days together with the customers. The way I feel … has changed completely. It’s like my feelings have been transplanted.”
Yoshifuji has also expanded the OriHime offering to include a mobile robot that guests can take around Tokyo for a personalised tour.
“What I loved about having our tour guide right on our shoulder is I feel like it was really flexible,” Canadian tourist Andrea Wheaton told the ABC.
“You can hear the warmth through their voice and some giggles on their end,” her husband, Dave Schultz, added.
Parker said her own visit left an impression.
“I had a great meal, and I met a new friend, Maya, who was the pilot of my robot,” Parker said in her vlog. “We talked the whole time while I had lunch.”
“The truth is, robots aren’t the scary part,” she concluded. “The real question is, what will we build them for?”
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