Robot serves up ice cream at Tokyo Summerland

For some reason, I can’t help but think that this image is cute. I mean, it is a robot serving ice cream.

The robot’s name is Yaskawa-kun, and it will be doing its job in Tokyo’s Summer-land theme park until August 22nd.

People can watch a video of this guy on his shift after the jump, and you will note the nifty Japanese music playing in the background. It sounds like something from the opera “Carmen”.

People can also note how slow it moves at some times as it grabs the cone, serves up the soft-serve, flavors it, and finally gives it to the customer. I’m pretty certain that a human being could do a faster job.

In other words, the employees at Baskin Robbins should have nothing to fear about being replaced by this guy. In fact, I wonder if they could build a robot that could be trained to scoop “harder” ice cream.

I wonder if we will see this guy at other theme parks. Maybe Disneyland could get one with a Mickey Mouse head instead of one that looks like the guy from the Jack in the Box ads.