Cafe utilizing robot waiters remotely controlled by people with disabilities to open in Tokyo

A cafe will open in Tokyo's Akasaka district in November featuring robot waiters remotely controlled from home by people with severe physical disabilities. The cafe, which will be open on weekdays between Nov. 26 to Dec. 7, will deploy OriHime-D robots controlled by disabled people with conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a form of motor neuron disease. The robot waiters, 1.2 meters tall and weighing 20 kg., will transmit video footage and audio via the internet, allowing their controllers to direct them from home via tablets or computers. At an event marking the OriHime-D's debut in August, a robot controlled by Nozomi Murata, who suffers from auto-phagic vacuolar myopathy that causes muscle weakness, asked a family if they would like some chocolate. "I want to create a world in which people who can't move their bodies can work too," said Kentaro Yoshifuji, chief executive officer of Ory Lab. Inc., the developer of the robots.