Everything was going well for innovative entrepreneur and restaurateur Haruki Odajima -- or so it seemed until the coronavirus pandemic swirled across the country earlier this year. His artificial intelligence business, Ebilab, which helps restaurants predict how many customers they will get with more than 95 percent accuracy, was flourishing. That success was driven by his long-established restaurant Ebiya in Ise, Mie Prefecture. He had been using the Japanese restaurant to demonstrate how his system can more than triple productivity, grow profits fivefold and reduce food waste by more than 70 percent. With businesses asked to close and people told to stay in, the restaurant industry has chalked up unprecedented losses as bankruptcies sweep the country.

In the midst of a surge in demand as more people shop online, the parcel delivery sector is struggling to keep up due to a chronic shortage of drivers. Meanwhile, restaurants are struggling to find ways to reduce waste in an industry notorious for razor-thin profit margins. A viable solution to both industries' conundrums could be artificial intelligence. Japan Data Science Consortium Co. (JDSC), a startup incubated at the University of Tokyo, believes it can solve this growing issue using its own AI patent that analyses household electricity data to calculate whether anyone will be home to receive a package during a given time period. In other words, the AI comes up with a delivery route for truck drivers based on the electricity data.