Tsumura & Co.

Movements to form corporate alliances across different industries are gathering pace, centered on physical AI, in which robots and automobiles move autonomously through artificial intelligence. Five companies including the herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading firm Yamazen have recently opened a data collection center for physical AI in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture, where up to 40 robots will repeatedly perform tasks to train robots capable of acting autonomously. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Yaskawa Electric, Japan's three major robot makers, are partnering with Fujitsu and the American company Nvidia, while about 20 companies including Kyocera, Kobe Steel, and the software developer Alm are pooling data and expertise with the aim of automating the processing techniques of skilled engineers. Noetra, in which 44 companies including SoftBank and NEC participate, is independently developing an AI foundation model that will serve as the brain of physical AI, aiming for practical application in fiscal 2030, and the government has decided to provide more than 380 billion yen in support for the project this fiscal year.

A data collection center for teaching physical AI human tasks, aimed at introducing humanoid robots into factories and logistics sites, went fully operational on the 26th in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture. Five companies, including the Chinese herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading company Yamazen, are participating in its operation, collaborating to collect the vast amounts of work data and conduct AI learning that would be difficult for a single company alone. The consortium "J-HRTI" (Jay Hearty), in which the five companies participate, operates the facility, which houses up to 40 Chinese-made humanoid robots and operators. Operators wearing virtual reality (VR) goggles operate the robots to collect data, and verification for introduction is conducted in an area that reproduces actual work environments. The aim is to introduce the robots for simple tasks such as transportation within this fiscal year. Tsumura Executive Officer Koichi Kumagai said, "As population decline makes it difficult to secure labor, automation and unmanned operations are necessary for stable supply."