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Tokyo's Bipedal Bet: Haneda Tests Humanoids Against Japan's Demographic Cliff TOKYO — Japan Airlines has begun a three-year pilot at Haneda Airport that puts two Unitree-built bipedal robots to work on the ramp and inside cabins, the carrier's response to a labour squeeze that no amount of overtime is going to fix.
The units, supplied via a tie-up with GMO AI and Robotics, will move baggage containers and run cabin-cleaning routines between turnarounds.
Sticker price per unit sits near 15,400 US dollars, an order of magnitude cheaper than the wheeled industrial systems that would have required Haneda to retrofit its corridors and jet bridges.
That last point is the macro story for anyone watching capital allocation across Asia-Pacific transport hubs. JAL went bipedal precisely because airports were drawn around human gaits.
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