A Japanese store has introduced a robot called Robovie, to ensure that customers follow social distancing norms and other COVID19 guidelines like contact-less interactions.
Robovie, developed by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, has been running a trial run which began last week at the club shop of Cerezo Osaka, a professional football team, and will run until the end of the month. The developers of this robot have pre-programmed it with a lot of information about the layout of the shop as well as visual and motion sensors which can detect the movement of customers. It is said to detect those who are not wearing and will play a pre-recorded message politely instructing them to wear it.
The robot is now being put to test and its presence across the country will be scaled up by end of November.
The country is preparing to battle the third wave of Wuhan virus infections. The country has confirmed 119,420 cases and 1,908 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to public broadcaster NHK. The northernmost main island of Hokkaido, a popular tourist destination, has reported more than 200 cases for four days in a row, including a cluster of more than a dozen on the nearby island of Rishiri that local people are blaming on visitors and tourists.