Robots have been a growing trend in Japan, from waiting tables to bringing people their food, and an innovative idea by scientists have borne fruit - in the shape of a dual-armed robot which peels bananas without squashing the fruit inside.
Developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo, a video showed their robot skillfully using its two hands to pick up the banana and peel it in about three minutes.
Researchers Heecheol Kim, Yoshiyuki Ohmura and Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the University trained the robot in what was termed "deep imitation learning" process, where they demonstrated the banana-peeling action hundreds of times to produce sufficient data for the robot to learn these actions and replicate it.
Kuniyoshi said it took them more than 13 hours to train the robot for it to peel a banana without destroying the fruit at a 57% success rate.
The robot is still in its testing phase, but Kuniyoshi said he believes his robot training method can help teach robots to do different simple "human" tasks which he hopes can support Japan's labour shortage problems, for example at bento (lunch box) or food processing factories which are highly dependent on human labour.
