A huge humanoid robot has appeared in a country neighboring Russia to service railways.

Machines compensate for labor shortages

Japan has unveiled a huge humanoid robot to service railway lines. The 12-meter-tall machine features eyes shaped like Coca-Cola bottles and a head reminiscent of the cartoon character Wall-E, as well as large arms that can be equipped with blades or paint brushes.

Photo: Still from video

The creation of Japanese engineers is reminiscent of the huge evil robot from 1980s sci-fi films, but the new humanoid West Japan Railway employee was designed for little more than painting and landscaping, The Guardian writes, citing Agence France-Presse.

< p>Starting this month, a large machine with huge levers, a crude, disproportionately small head similar to a Wall-E robot, and eyes shaped like Coca-Cola bottles, mounted on a truck that can move on rails, will be used to carry out repair work on the company's network.

Its operator sits in the cab of the truck, “seeing” through the eyes of the robot using cameras and remotely controlling its powerful limbs and hands.

With a vertical lift height of 12 meters, the machine can use various devices to carry objects weighing up to 40 kg, hold a paint brush or use a chainsaw.

At the moment, the robot's main task will be to trim tree branches along the rails and paint the metal frames on which the cables are attached above the trains.

The technology will help fill labor shortages in aging Japan and also reduce the number of accidents such as workers falling from heights or electrocutions, the company said.

“In the future, we hope to use the machines for all types of maintenance work on our infrastructure,” company President Kazuaki Hasegawa said at a recent press conference, and this should serve as an example of how to cope with labor shortages.