17:11 JST, November 2, 2024
If you can’t visit the Osaka-Kansai Expo 2025, perhaps you can see it through the eyes of human-sized remote-controlled robots.
A team of researchers, mainly from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), plan to introduce the technology so that people outside the site can join visitors and tour one of the pavilions.
The robots, which the Kyoto Prefecture ATR team calls “avatars,” will be used in the “Future of Life” pavilion for the six months of the expo. Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University, one of Japan’s leading android researchers, produced the pavilion.
About 40 robots, including androids, will be readied for use in the pavilion, some of which can be controlled as avatars by remote participants.
The team developed an exclusive system that allows remote visitors to control the avatars with computers over the Internet.
Online visitors use their computer mouse to move the avatars wherever they want. They can look around the pavilion via a camera on the box or another part of the robot.
Until now, robot avatars have been used for people who cannot go outside due to a serious disability or illness. They can attend school classes, try to serve customers in cafes and participate in social activities using their avatar.
The team of researchers sees the expo effort as an experiment for a future society where humans and robots will coexist safely in the same environment.
They have managed to improve the wireless technology that allows the robot avatars to receive commands and have about 100 robots move in different ways at the same time.
The team said it will be the first time in the history of expo events that robot avatars will be used at the venue.
Shogo Nishimura, senior researcher of the ATR team and expert in human robot interaction, said: “By using the robot avatars, even people who cannot come to the venue can enjoy the event. We want to show a barrier-free future at the fair.”
