A Cutting-Edge Smart Building in Takeshiba has Opened.

 ■A Cutting-Edge Smart Building in Takeshiba has Opened.

Tokyo Port City Takeshiba, a cutting-edge smart building full of robots, AI, and IoT, has opened.

The building was built by Tokyu Land Corporation and Kajima Corporation on 1.5 hectares of land owned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the shore of Tokyo Bay. The CiP Council (which I represent), a group of 50 companies and organizations, helped the Tech & Pop plan and design of the building.

Of the 40 floors, the lower floors have halls and exhibition halls, and CiP will be on the 8th floor, running industry-academia collaboration projects.

Above that, Softbank's headquarters will be established there, providing an environment for 5G and data distribution.

The first thing you'll see are the robots: the AI receptionist/guide robots and information signage robots that make humans appear.

Some robots carry your luggage and serve you drinks.

Some avatars connect to remote areas, and there are others running around giving something out to visitors.

At the Lawson convenience store on the first floor, Model-T, a robot developed by Telexistence　Inc. from the University of Tokyo-KMD, is placed in the backyard to remotely sort drinks and lunch boxes displays.

This is a remotely controlled convenience store where robots can work without the need for staff.

Digital signage has also evolved. The availability of stores and restrooms is monitored by sensors and displayed. Stores are cashless, of course.

Face recognition will be used to enter Softbank, and elevators will be assigned according to a person's designation.

The infrastructure that supports all of this is, of course, 5G. There are 1,300 sensors embedded, and data on human flow, attributes, congestion, weather, and so on is analyzed and collected for edge analysis.

Softbank intends to assemble these as an "urban OS" and expand it to other areas.

500-meters from Hamamatsucho Station, a pedestrian deck has been built 15 meters above the ground directly connected to the building.

Beyond the building is Tokyo Bay.

The 20-hectare Takeshiba area has been approved as a national strategic special zone, but it wasn’t a glamorous area lined with warehouses.

However, this building has triggered a rapid redevelopment of the area.

The idea for this Tech & Pop special zone started eight years ago.

It was planned and designed almost entirely during the Abe administration.

The opening ceremony was held on the same day that the Kan administration was elected as the LDP president.