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The bots have got this in the bag.
We may no longer fear disgruntled luggage handlers playing soccer with our suitcases. Japan Airlines is looking to fill a baggage handler gap by enlisting an army of automated bag bots to assist their human counterparts.
Starting in May, these humanoid luggage handlers — manufactured by China’s Unitree robotics — will debut at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, which handles more than 60 million passengers per year, The Guardian reported.
Chinese-made humanoids will move travelers’ luggage and cargo on the tarmac at Haneda. If the dry run is successful, these automated bagmen could potentially become a more permanent part of the workflow by 2027, per a press release by Japan Airlines.
A demonstration of the automated bag handlers was put on this week, revealing a 130-cm (4 ft, 3.2 in) robot “pushing” cargo onto a conveyor belt next to a passenger plane and waving to a colleague.
Yoshiteru Suzuki, president of JAL Ground Service, told the Kyodo News agency that utilizing robots for strenuous physical labor would “inevitably reduce workers’ burden, providing significant benefits to employees.”
However, he noted that certain tasks, such as safety management, can only be handled by humans.
“While airports appear highly automated and standardized, their back-end operations still rely heavily on human labour and face serious labor shortages,” Tomohiro Uchida, president of GMO AI and Robotics, said.
JAL and Japan Airlines GMO Internet Group anticipate that the experiment, which is meant to end in 2028, will lessen the workload of human employees as inbound tourism increases.
The humanoid robots would also provide extra staffing to overburdened baggage handlers amid the country’s labor shortage — though they would need regular breaks to recharge, literally.
Robots can operate continuously for about two to three hours, according to The Guardian, and they’re also projected to be used for other tasks such as cleaning aircraft cabins.
Japan has been struggling to deal with a surge in tourists from overseas. More than 7 million people visited the country in the first two months of 2026 alone, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Last year, a record Japan saw a record 42.7 million visitors.
One estimate showed that Japan would need more than 6.5 million foreign workers by 2040 in order to reach its growth target as the workforce decreases, The Guardian reported.
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