AIBRIEF
Shimizu's deputy construction technology chief, Shinichi Sakamoto, says earlier in house construction robots failed under reworking, and none of those machines are still in use.
Shimizu Corporation, one of Japan's largest contractors, has put an AI-controlled humanoid robot to work on the Tokiwabashi Project in Tokyo, planned to become Japan's tallest building. The pilot is Shimizu's response to a labor shortage the company itself describes as severe.
The trial is the contractor's first humanoid deployment on a live site, and the executive running it has already named the failure mode that ended the last generation. "Earlier robots needed human support to move and required substantial rework, and none of those machines are still in use today," Shinichi Sakamoto, deputy general manager of Shimizu's construction technology division, told Global Construction Review.
The current robot navigates a pre-designated route at roughly one meter per second using onboard cameras and sensors, according to Shimizu's 2026027 corporate release. The contractor says the machine can handle multiple tasks beyond repetitive functions and will eventually learn to paint from human workers, though those capabilities remain self-reported and unproven on site.
Shimizu is running the pilot under its Smart Site construction program and lists Sony and other unnamed firms as technical partners, without specifying their roles.
The open question is the one Sakamoto already conceded: whether reworking, the failure that ended the prior in-house robots, will again erase the time savings a humanoid is meant to deliver.