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Robotics

GMO Internet Group deploys Japan's first 'humanoid ambulance' in Tokyo

GMO Internet Group has begun operating a repair van in Tokyo that services broken humanoid robots on site and swaps in a spare unit when a fix cannot be made at the roadside.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-17 09:24

The van carries diagnostic equipment, spare parts, repair tools and engineers to wherever a robot has stopped working. If the machine cannot be fixed at the roadside, a spare humanoid on board is swapped in to take over the job immediately, while the broken unit is ferried back to GMO's repair base at its Humanoid Lab in Shibuya, Tokyo, according to Engadget.

Only one ambulance is stationed at the company's Tokyo headquarters for now, and it will not respond to every disabled robot. The service covers only humanoids deployed by GMO AI & Robotics Trading, also known as GMO AIR, with each dispatch decided case by case.

GMO AIR is the same unit behind humanoid robots working as baggage handlers at a Tokyo airport. It is running a trial of Unitree-built machines at Haneda in collaboration with JAL Ground Service through 2028.

"When humanoids become more popular, this kind of service will be needed," Shota Takizawa, an engineer at GMO AIR, said at a press event covered by Euronews.

The vehicle's interior and exterior were styled by designer Yasumichi Morita of the Tokyo firm GLAMOROUS, who modeled the look on emergency vehicles from around the world. It features purple roof-mounted lightbars and the text "Humanoid Ambulance" on the outside.

Tomohiro Uchida, chief executive of GMO AIR, said the ambulance service grew out of earlier problems in which damaged humanoids had to be sent away for repair, disrupting service. "Learning from that experience, we came up with the idea of providing replacement humanoids," he said.

GMO's parent business is internet infrastructure: domains, hosting and related services. Its robotics arm does not build robots at all, but resells hardware from Unitree and other manufacturers and sells services around those machines.

Japan's government published an AI Robotics Strategy in April that targets more than 30 percent of the global robot market and a domestic industry worth roughly $135 billion by 2040. GMO is pitching the ambulance as a service built ahead of demand, a way to accumulate field-repair experience before humanoids are common enough to require it.