There are two Toyota cars in Japan – and both are interested in automation. While the mobility group Toyota Motor concentrates on robots in the care sector, its second largest shareholder, the former loom manufacturer Toyota Industries, relies on useful special applications for corporate customers. With Japan’s largest global airline All Nippon Airways (ANA), the company that spun off Toyota Motor 1937 launched robotic baggage loaders and autonomous Tugs for luggage and aircraft containers subjected to an endurance test.

Robots for the airport The one-week field test at Saga Airport in southern Japan served to further develop the technologies and accelerate their introduction, announced the two partners. The medium-term goal is to build a “smart”, i.e. more automated, airport of the future.

The companies are concentrating on one of the most labor-intensive processes in aircraft handling. The baggage loader is the first of its kind in the country specifically designed for aircraft. The choice of Toyota Industries as a partner is logical for ANA. Because Toyota Industries, after all still a group with 15 billion dollar sales, is one of the largest suppliers of forklifts and transport equipment for logistics companies worldwide . After all, two thirds of sales are attributable to this division.

The loading robot is a rededicated arm of an industrial robot. It has a newly developed robotic hand and stacks luggage exactly according to size in the aircraft container. Every 25 seconds the machine loader stows a box or suitcase with up to 35 Kilogram weight.

Resolve labor shortage In the next In the next step, an autonomous tractor pulls the luggage caravan on a programmed path at up to 15 km / h to the aircraft, where the containers then be loaded. The two companies not only want to demonstrate the connection of the new loader with the pulling robot, but also gain knowledge for the introduction of the system at other airports in Japan.

The project is part of an official initiative that to develop new technologies for the shrinking Japanese society. Because in the fastest aging society in the world, the biggest problem on the labor market is not mass unemployment, but labor shortage.

Japan has always tried everything possible with electronics – and often the impossible. Every Thursday our author Martin Kölling reports on the latest trends here.

This is especially true for the Delivery industry in Japan. As in other countries, robots are therefore being sent out onto the streets to automatically deliver purchases to customers’ doorsteps. The electronics manufacturer Panasonic has tested a rolling robot on the street in the “Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town” settlement built by the group.

Family settlement test field From February, the system will be demonstrated to drive to the front doors of the single-family housing estate. The more people got used to online orders, the more serious the labor shortage would become at delivery, the group explained the initiative.

Even before the corona crisis, the delivery services pushed overtime. But since contactless shopping has become pandemically correct, Amazon is no longer just vying for door-to-door delivery in Japan, but also retailers, restaurants and, more recently, the big convenience chains.

Dominate with tens of thousands of small mini-supermarkets they have been doing neighborhood retail for decades. The Seven-Eleven chain has now tried the prompt local delivery of small online orders. Not even Amazon in Japan can offer such a service. (bsc)