Serving Customers with Robots Remotely Operated by Persons with DisabilitiesCafé holds test run – aiming for permanent facility in 2020

The café is named AVATAR Café DAWN ver.β, and employs 10 people selected from among 30 applicants from across Japan. The 10 employees are males and females ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, and each has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS;, also known as motor neuron disease (MND), or Lou Gehrig’s disease) or another serious physical disability. They are taking turns operating 120-centimeter tall humanoid robots named OriHime (OriHime-D models) remotely from their homes to take orders and deliver juice or coffee to customers in the café.

At a press event prior to the café’s opening, The Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa noted, “The ‘Dynamic Engagement of All Citizens’ concept [being promoted by the Japanese government] fundamentally means a society in which persons with disabilities can fully participate. We need to correct the misunderstanding that persons with disabilities require public support in order to live.” Kentaro Yoshifuji, co-founder and CEO of Ory Laboratory, which developed the robots, added, “We will study the questionnaires returned by visitors to the café and by persons with disabilities to determine what functions OriHime needs to have, and aim to open a permanent facility in 2020.”

Shinichiro Ito, chairman of ANA Holdings, expressed his appreciation for the work being done by The Nippon Foundation and Ory Laboratory to support the employment of persons with disabilities, commenting, “The ANA Group wants to strengthen this project by providing technology from our ‘ANA AVATAR Vision’ endeavor to enable humanity to instantaneously teleport their presence, consciousness, knowledge and skills to a remote location.” Also attending the event was Seiko Noda, a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, who noted, “When persons without disabilities try to make things easier for persons with disabilities it often has the effect of shutting them out,” and (as the mother of a child with physical disabilities) expressed her hopes for the project going forward, commenting, “People with disabilities always live together with their families. I worry about what will happen after the parents die. I am very hopeful about the possibilities for people with disabilities to live independently thanks to OriHime.”