The new branch manager

November 1, 2026

Japan’s train delays have met their final boss, and he brought a chainsaw.

Railway giant JR East is using a truck-mounted humanoid maintenance robot, with one arm to grab branches and another to cut them. A person operates it remotely, so it’s less Skynet and more extremely aggressive gardening.

The bot tackles labor shortages, and future AI image recognition could detect track obstructions without someone pointing them out. The trains might run smoother, but the local shrubbery is living in a horror movie.

Watch it in action here.