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Title: Robot Suits help Bankers lug piles of Cash
Source:
Wall Street Journal
URL Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05 ... ees-deliver-heavy-cash-stacks/
Published: May 9, 2015
Author: Atsuko Fukase
Post Date: 2015-05-09 06:31:21 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 1131
Comments: 1
Robots are starting to turn up in bank branches to greet customers, and now they’re getting ready for service behind the scenes to help older employees lift heavy stacks of cash. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., the core banking unit of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., said Thursday it has rented eight robotic suits developed by Japanese robotic maker Cyberdyne Inc. to ease the burden on the employees delivering cash. The bank says that would be a first among Japanese financial institutions. “There have been many cases when a physical burden was placed on senior employees carrying heavy parcels of bank notes and coins. By adopting Cyberdyne’s robotic suits, we can help reduce that burden,” said Tomoyuki Narita, a spokesman at SMBC, Japan’s second-largest bank by assets after Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. SMBC Delivery Service Co., which mainly collects and delivers cash between bank outlets, has approximately 1,600 workers and about 16% of them are over age 65. “We are currently placing the robotic suits at four outposts” of the delivery service, “but we’ll consider adding them in more places including the bank’s branches after assessing the effects,” Mr. Narita said. He said the Hybrid Assistive Limb or HAL suit could reduce the burden of carrying a heavy object by about 40%, so that carrying a 10-kilogram container of bank notes and coins would feel like six kilograms. Cyberdyne adopted the HAL name from the computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The Tsukuba-based startup, which listed its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last year, says the suits are designed to help nursing-home workers lift heavy objects and people undergoing physiotherapy recover strength in their arms or legs. The suits, which are available only through lease, are already used at retirement homes and hospitals. Yoshiyuki Sankai, Cyberdyne’s president, said he hoped his company’s technology would support Japan’s aging society, where more than a quarter of the population is 65 or over. The robotics company shares a name with the fictional defense firm behind Skynet, the artificial intelligence system that turned Earth into an apocalyptic wasteland in the Terminator series.
Poster Comment: Even with robotic help, dumbass bankers need to learn the proper lifting technique. 
A bank employee demonstrates use of a
robot suit to help lift heavy packages of cash.
-- Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.
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#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
Are they kidding? Wiki: In early 2009, Cyberdyne attracted international media attention with the announcement that it will be marketing and distributing the HAL 5 (Hybrid Assistive Limb) powered exoskeleton,[5] which they claim augments body movement and increases user strength by up to ten times.[6] As of February 2013, Cyberdyne has leased 330 HAL suits to 150 facilities across Japan, and HAL has been given a global safety certification that should allow it to be distributed outside Japan.[7]
Japanese robotic maker Cyberdyne Inc.
The name is the same as a fictional company from the Terminator film series, which also produces robots. The name, however, is not intentionally a reference, but from the new academic fields of "Cybernics,"[3] and the suffix "-dyne," referring to power.[4]
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