Japanese Baseball Team Replaces Fans With Robots

While Japan is still fighting the coronavirus, some industries are beginning to open up with restrictions. The Nippon Professional Baseball  league has recently resumed activities. While players are on the field, fans are still restricted from attending the games. That isn’t stopping the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks . The team is putting 20 dancing robots in the stands to cheer on their players.

The robots include SoftBank’s famous humanoid ‘Pepper’ and Boston Dynamics’ four legged dog like robot “Spot”.  All 20 robots performed a choreographed dance number to the team’s fight song. The dance is usually performed by the team’s human fans in the 40,000 capacity Fukuoka Dome.

Along with the choreographed routine,  Spot waved the teams banner while Pepper was dressed in a Hawk’s t-shirt and showed the logo on its screen. Spot has been used in places like construction sites and to even enforce social distancing. Pepper is perhaps the world’s most famous robot as it’s been quite popular in places like cafe’s and hospitals.

Robot Baseball Fans Cheered Hawks to Victory

Thanks to the enthusiastic robot fans, the Hawks won 4-3 over the Rakuten Eagles. The team looks to defend their 2019 NPB championship in a baseball season that started three months late on June 19th. The robots in the stands may soon be joined by a few humans as Japan will soon begin allowing up to 5000 fans to attend professional baseball and soccer games.