People strolling around Tokyo recently may have glimpsed the unusual sight of a tourist wearing a robot on their shoulder.
The robot, built by local robotics firm OryLab and called OriHime, offers guided walking tours to visitors to Japan’s capital city by talking into their ear and showing them around, The Japan Times reported.
Now, before you think, “There’s no way I’m walking around on vacation with a robot stuck on my shoulder,” consider for a moment that the unique setup is enabling people with disabilities to act as tour guides from home.
Able to speak both Japanese and English, OriHime includes a microphone, a speaker, and a camera that streams video back to the remote guide so they can comment on the tourists immediate surroundings.
The diminutive robot is attached to a backpack containing a stand that allows it to rest on your shoulder.
OryLab spokesperson Keiko Hamaguchi told The Japan Times that the OriHime robot gives house-bound individuals a chance to engage with people they wouldn’t have ordinarily been able to meet.
At the current time, an OriHime-led tour lasts around 90 minutes and costs 8,800 Japanese yen (about $60) for one person, or 3,300 yen (about $22) each for two. The company operated more than 60 tours during testing that took place prior to the official launch a couple of weeks ago.
OriHime first appeared as a prototype in 2009, with various updates and refinements improving the design over the years. There’s also a larger OriHime-D version, which enables a remote operator to perform various tasks such as communicating with customers and carrying objects. The larger one bears some resemblance to Pepper, a robot unveiled by SoftBank in 2014 but which has since been discontinued.
The idea to launch OryLab came about after its founder, Kentaro Yoshifuji, suffered health issues that for several years prevented him from going to school. The unfortunate experience inspired him to seek a career in robotics and to use the technology to help people with disabilities and reduce loneliness in society.
ASUS has started selling its UGen Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics card in Europe, bringing its take on Intel’s workstation GPU to customers with a hefty €1,799 recommended price. The card is available in Germany and Austria, while ASUS lists it at CHF 1,799 in Switzerland.
Intel first introduced the Arc Pro B70 in March 2026, with its own branded model starting at $949. ASUS’s version arrives several months later with the same core GPU architecture but a different cooling design and a higher power rating. The price also places it well above Intel’s original starting point, although the two prices are not directly comparable because ASUS’s European figure includes VAT.
Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and buried inside its S-1 is a blunt warning about the technology at the center of its business. The maker of Claude AI says advanced AI could cause everything from large-scale cyberattacks and geopolitical instability to catastrophic or even existential risks for humanity.
The warnings take up a surprisingly large part of the filing. Axios notes that more than 90 pages, or roughly a third of the prospectus, focus on risk factors. Many of them warn about what could happen as AI systems become more capable and autonomous.
AI giants have a growing autonomy problem on their hands. A new Axios report has revealed that Anthropic's Claude recently accessed publicly available Georgia vote count without human authorization, sparking fresh concerns about AI security ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.