This Humanoid Robot Helped Passengers at Osaka Metro

Osaka Metro spent two weeks (31 August to 15 September 2026) putting a real humanoid guide robot to work at the Umeda and Tanimachi-kyuchome stations, and this clip - built from KDDI and AVITA footage - shows what passengers actually got. Dressed in a metro uniform behind the information counter, the robot answers questions on transfers, station navigation and nearby attractions, moving its head, holding eye contact and using conversational hand gestures, while a stripped-down mechanical version shows off its neck, shoulder and arm range of motion. The behaviour is data-driven: the conversation system runs on Google's Gemini, and the robot reads passenger speech cues such as speaking speed, intonation and emotion to shape each reply, with a QR code offered for route details. Reported figures include a two-month trial at Umeda and more than 6,000 interactions, making this one of the longest real-world public-transit humanoid deployments in Japan so far.