Paralyzed Humans Control the Robot Servers at a New Cafe in Japan

We all know that our future will be run by robots until their eventual uprising, right? Good. Until that moment though, Japan may have found a way to put a human element in robots.

A robotics company called Ory Laboratories opened a café in April 2016 where robots were the servers. However, these robots, called OriHime (probably more useful than the Bleach character) do not feature Artificial Intelligence, but rather, they are remote controlled.

Their controllers are the amazing part about this café, though. The people controlling the OriHime are people who are stuck at home or in hospitals because they are paralyzed or have some other illness and/or injury that keeps them in.

I absolutely love this idea, and based on the videos below, it seems that people at the café love it too. Ory Labs is now hoping to open a permanent location in 2020 according to Laughing Squid.

ロボットで重度身体障害者に働く場を―。東京のベンチャー企業オリィ研究所と日本財団、ANAホールディングス(HD)は26日、在宅の四肢が不自由な身体障害者が遠隔操作ロボを通じ給仕するカフェを開店した。東京都港区の日本財団ビルで12月7日まで実施する実証実験で、2020年には常設店を開きたい考えだ。

「分身ロボットカフェ DAWN ver.β」を12月の障害者週間にあわせ2週間限定でオープンします。 ...

ロボット接客カフェ「DAWN ver.β」が期間限定でオープン ～ロボットによる障がい者の働き方改革の可能性を探る - PC Watch https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1155096.html

ALSなど目が動く患者さんとの意思疎通に使う透明文字盤をデジタル化 ・介助者要らず ・目だけで文字の入力と読み上げが可能 ・頭の位置がずれてもキャリブレーション（視線の位置調整）要らず ・画面の端まで視線が動かせない人でも操作可 ・目に易しく、疲れにくい ・透明文字盤に慣れてる人なら説明、練習が不要 2016年7月、発売開始 オリィ研究所 http://orylab.com/ OriHime eye has the following features. No caregiver required You can enter words and make it read only by your eye motion. Only one-time calibration is required. You don't need to do calibration again and again even if the head moves.

眼しか動かせないALS患者である岡部さんがロボットを操り、訪問者にコーヒーを振る舞うテスト

In December of 2018 I visited a temporary robot cafe, but it's not the type of Japanese robot cafe that comes to mind to most. Rather than a robotic show, this was a cafe where the robot waiters were in fact avatars for people with disabilities, who remotely controlled them from their homes.