Robots can't replace human touch for Japanese businesses

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The robot's camera sensors were not sensitive enough to identify every eye. While human hands can roll a potato in every direction, the robot could rotate the vegetables on only one axis, and so failed to dig out many of the blemishes that are toxic to humans. Other perfectly good pieces were carved away. "Fundamentally, it could not do the work to the standard of humans,"

Japan, the world's third-largest economy, hopes that robots and other types of automation will help solve its demographic problems and impending labour shortage.

Robots can "perform simple tasks but not tasks that require judgment or the ability to evaluate a change in a situation"

Looking to robots allows Japan to avoid hard choices about immigration, a delicate topic in a country reluctant to let in many outsiders. But it is also a good cultural fit.

Workers peel pumpkins, for example, because some skin enhances the flavour of stew. A robot cannot determine just how much skin to shuck off.

A hotel staffed by androids in southern Japan ended up laying off some of its robots after customers complained that they were not as good at hospitality as people.

During a trial of self-driving buses in Oita City, also in southern Japan, one bus crashed into a kerb, and officials realised that autonomous vehicles were not quite ready to cope with situations like traffic jams, jaywalkers or cars running red lights.