Comment Maybe it's also about gaining xperience (Score 1) 181
When this thing has been field tested and gone down in price...
I think this is the point of a lot of non-portable high-technology. You manufacture them to gain experience because maybe, just maybe, there'll soon be a market for robot servers. I mean, look at electric cars. There are a lot of companies trying to make one, and yet it's less profitable (if at all) than the standard gas/diesel models.
Japan has a rapidly aging population, so having a significant, if not exactly huge market, for service industry robots is by no means a long shot. Perhaps the future will be one robot to do them all, cut and wash your hair, give you a massage and perhaps, uhm, other things. But who knows, maybe specialist robots will be the rule. One robot to wash you hair, another to cut it, still another to give you a mani/pedicure.