When many of us picture Japan, we imagine a futuristic place filled with robots, anime, and sushi. That’s not entirely accurate but if you ever end up working there, you may be able to experience two of the three during your lunch hour.

CarriRo Robot Brings You Sushi

Popular sushi brand ‘Gin no Sara’ has teamed with robotics company ZMP to bring people their lunch in Japan. The adorable red robot is named CarriRo and completely autonomous. With its big eyes and flashing lights, it looks like it’s straight out of a child’s cartoon so it won’t scare people as it moves up and down the sidewalks. Standing 3 feet tall, it navigates using cameras and laser sensors. It can run for up to eight hours, hold about sushi for about 60 people and make deliveries during the day or night.

This Autonomous Delivery Robot is Just an App Click Away

Customers order through the app and choose a location for delivery. The restaurant puts the boxes of sushi into CarriRo and it’s off to deliver your lunch!  CarriRo has built-in GPS so you can see exactly where the robot is with your sushi. When the robot arrives, the app will provide a key to unlock the unit and the sushi will be released.

These autonomous delivery robots are still in the testing phase. Japan has some legal restrictions about robots delivering goods so they are mainly being tried out in private areas like corporate parks.

More Than Just Sushi

ZMP is not just about sushi robots as the company sees CarriRo delivering things like prescription drugs, household items, and packages. They would also be quite helpful in places like supermarkets and malls as the robot can work indoors or outdoors. It’s small stature, friendly disposition, and ability to work at night could help it integrate into society quicker than some other delivery robots.

Places that have an aging population like Japan, could greatly benefit from something like CarriRo as it would help make up for the shortage of labor and be an asset for elderly or disabled citizens who have trouble getting around. Theoretically, a user could put an order into an app, the robot could go into a place like CVS, grab their prescription and deliver it right to their door without a senior citizen having to leave their home.

We’ve seen autonomous delivery robots start to take hold in China and Japan seems like the next logical place. There is definitely more testing to do but so far this autonomous delivery robot has passed with flying colors. ZMP is not stopping with the CarriRo as the company is also working on things like driverless taxis.

Check out our article about robots that can make your food and ones that can taste or smell it.