SoftBank Corp. and Yaskawa Electric Partner to Develop “Physical AI” Use Case for Offices

Due to its declining birthrate and aging population, Japan is facing a severe labor shortage. Accordingly, the need for automation and labor-saving solutions is growing across many industries, and the use of AI and robotics is becoming increasingly important to address these requirements.

While industrial robots have been widely adopted in factories, in environments that see large numbers of people moving around—such as offices, hospitals, schools and department stores—complex decision-making and flexible responses to unpredictable situations are called for, and this poses a challenge for traditional robots.

To help robots make more advanced decisions and expand their range of tasks, SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) and Yaskawa Electric Corporation—a leading manufacturer of servo motor, AC drives, and industrial robots—teamed up to improve robot functionality.

Expanding robot capabilities by integrating AI and communication technologies

On December 1, 2025, both companies announced a collaboration to socially implement “Physical AI”—a technology that enables robots to analyze and interpret data from sensors, cameras, and external systems through AI, allowing them to perform flexible and complex physical movements based on AI-driven decisions.

The partnership sees the high operational performance and precise control realized through Yaskawa Electric’s AI robotics being combined with SoftBank's AI-RAN technology. In the first phase of their collaboration, SoftBank and Yaskawa Electric jointly developed a use case for an office-oriented Physical AI robot that integrates with building management systems and utilizes AI running on Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). The use case enables the integration and analysis of various types of information in real time, making it possible to accurately assess situations, and provide optimal instructions to robots. As a result, robots can flexibly perform a wider variety of tasks, and realize "multi-skilled functionality" suitable for office environments.

Yaskawa Electric and SoftBank are demonstrating this use case at Yaskawa’s main booth at the 2025 International Robot Exhibition (iREX 2025) held at Tokyo Big Sight from December 3rd to 6th, 2025.