Osaka Metro put a humanoid on the ticket gates

Osaka Metro began a field trial of a humanoid station attendant on August 31, 2026, run with KDDI and AVITA, the avatar company founded by Osaka University’s Hiroshi Ishiguro. The robot, 178 centimetres tall and nicknamed Hinata, is stationed at the Midosuji Line ticket gates at Umeda Station through September 6, then moves to Tanimachi 9-chome Station from September 9 to 15. It operates from 11:00 to 20:00 and answers questions about station facilities, transfers and local sightseeing, supporting guidance in about 60 languages. Its conversational layer runs on Google’s Gemini.

The task, not the machine

Nothing about the hardware is the point here. A guide robot does not manipulate, does not lift and does not move through crowds. What it does is absorb the highest-volume, lowest-margin interaction in a transit system — where do I change, which exit, how do I get to the castle — from staff who are needed for everything else, and do it in languages the station cannot staff for.

That makes it a language product mounted on a body, which is also its risk. Wayfinding answers have to be correct; a confidently wrong transfer instruction in a subway station is a worse failure than no answer. Running it as a dated two-week trial at two stations, rather than a rollout, is the appropriate shape for that risk.

Why it matters

Japan’s humanoid deployments keep landing in places where the labour is scarce rather than expensive — stations, care homes, laboratories. That is a different selection rule from the American and Chinese pattern, where humanoids are pointed at warehouse and factory tasks that already have automation alternatives.

It also puts a second public-facing humanoid business model in view. Osaka Metro is paying for a service it already provides; the machine is a cost line, judged on whether it deflects queries. That is not the same commercial test as the ticketed and retail deployments where the public pays to be in the room with the robot, and it is worth keeping the two apart when reading claims about humanoid revenue.