--- title: "Japanese Airport Trialing Humanoid Robots as Baggage Handlers" description: "Japan Airlines, in partnership with GMO AI & Robotics, will start trialing humanoid robots to help baggage handlers at Haneda airport." date: "2026-05-01" modified: "2026-05-01" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/japan-trialing-humanoid-robots-baggage-handlers" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" --- # Japanese Airport Trialing Humanoid Robots as Baggage Handlers ![A humanoid robot is shown unloading a jet at an airport.]() *Kyodo News / Getty Images* The future is truly upon us — because the next time your check-in luggage gets battered, you could be blaming a robot. Starting in May, Japan Airlines, in partnership with GMO AI & Robotics, will start trialing humanoid robots to help baggage handlers at Tokyo's Haneda airport, it announced Monday, in the hopes that they could one day alleviate a labor shortage. In a [demonstration held in front of the media](), one of the mechanical helpers built by the Chinese Robotics company [Unitree]() gently pushes — or should we say barely touches — a metal container stacked with suitcases towards a passenger jet. Its contribution is entirely perfunctory, though, since the container is actually being moved by a conveyor belt; the robot didn't "help" with anything at all. Not that the robot's aware. Oblivious, the Unitree machine proudly waves to his human colleague controlling the belt, who kindly returns a thumbs-up. The stunt is clearly not a serious demonstration of the robots' capabilities — if it does have meaningful capabilities at all — but Japan Airlines certainly sounds serious about the experiment, since it's planning for it to run until 2028. It will be a trial by fire for the androids. Serving more than 60 million passengers per year, Haneda is easily one of the busiest air travel hubs in the world. Slip-ups could lead to luggage being lost or damaged, or costly delays. They'll also face steep competition. We're not trying to launder Japan's PR any more than it already gets, but its baggage handlers are pretty lauded for being thorough and gentle, and [going above and beyond](). That's kind of remarkable, since the only other time baggage handlers make the news is for [piling together your fragile belongings]() like sandbags. How capable the bots prove remains to be seen. It could go horribly wrong, given the number of [robot flameouts]() we've witnessed. But in theory they'll help Japan's baggage handlers deal with the influx of tourists, seven million of whom visited in the first two months of this year alone. "While airports appear highly automated and standardised, their back-end operations still rely heavily on human labour and face serious labour shortages," GMO AI & Robotics' president Tomohiro Uchida told reporters, [per the *BBC*](). **More on robots:** [*New AI-Powered Robot Can Destroy Human Champions at Ping Pong*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()