Japanese rail company rolls out VR-piloted robot worker

With the introduction of piloted robots for civil work, there will be also accidents and attempts to use them for criminal purpose. Quickly the Tokio Metropolitan Police will introduce a Special Vehicle Section equipped with patrol labor (instead of just patrol cars) or Patlabors.

You can read more about this initiative on the official Tokio Metropolitan Police page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Patlabor_episodes).

This sounds more like the "Labors" from Mobile Police Patlabor -- those were actually used in-universe for construction/maintenance work. (But of course, all humanoid robots are Gundams to the uninitiated, much like how all game consoles were Nintendos to the '90s mom)

Human Machinery, the company noted in the article responsible for the remote controlled robot arm system, has a pretty cool Japanese name: Jinki Ittai (人機一体). It's a play on the old Japanese term Jinba Ittai (人馬一体), which refers to how an experienced horserider can ride with such synergy with their horse as to appear as if they are one. The company name replaces the letter for "horse"(馬) with "machine"(機).

In fact, their official website seems to have their English name written much more literally, as Man-Machine Synergy Effectors, Inc. https://jinki.jp/

Gundam in the title is an absolute clickbait... as expected

Reminds me a lot of surgical robotics just at a larger (physically) scale. We went from tiny tweezers and scalpels to giant grabbing arms.

That's not a Gundam!

Reminds me of this Veritasium episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1_OpWiyijU

Now that I think about it, those super robot pilots never use VR nor do their helmets support AR.

A bit like a Centaur robot but with telescoping. Great design for the job.