Japan’s famously conscientious but overburdened baggage handlers will soon be joined by extra staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – although their new colleagues will need to take regular recharging breaks.

Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May, with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage.

The Chinese-made humanoids will move travellers’ luggage and cargo on the tarmac at Haneda, which handles more than 60 million passengers a year.

JAL and its partner in the initiative, Japan Airlines GMO Internet Group, hope the experiment – which ends in 2028 – will lessen the burden on human employees amid a surge in inbound tourism and forecasts of more severe labour shortages.

In a demonstration for the media this week, a 130cm-tall robot manufactured by Hangzhou-based Unitree was seen tentatively “pushing” cargo on to a conveyer belt next to a JAL passenger plane and waving to an unseen colleague.

The president of JAL Ground Service, Yoshiteru Suzuki, said using robots to perform physically demanding work would “inevitably reduce the burden on workers and provide significant benefits to employees”, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Suzuki added, however, that certain key tasks – such as safety management – would continue to be performed by humans.

Japan is struggling to cope with a simultaneous surge in tourists from overseas and an ageing, declining population.

More than 7 million people visited the country in the first two months of 2026, according to the Japan National Tourism Organisation, after a record 42.7 million last year, despite a drop in the number of visitors from China triggered by a diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing.

According to one estimate, Japan will need more than 6.5 million foreign workers in 2040 to reach its growth targets as the indigenous workforce continues to shrink. The country’s foreign population has risen dramatically in recent years, but the government is now under political pressure to rein in immigration.

The president of GMO AI and Robotics, Tomohiro Uchida, said: “While airports appear highly automated and standardised, their back-end operations still rely heavily on human labour and face serious labor shortages.”

Robots can operate continuously for two to three hours and the firms are planning to use them to perform other tasks, such as cleaning aircraft cabins.

Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.

Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university.

The strikes were the first violent incident since Chinese-mediated peace talks between the two sides earlier this month.

Pakistan and Afghanistan had been embroiled in months of deadly fighting that has killed hundreds of people since late February, when Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan. Islamabad had declared it was in open war with Afghanistan.

Pakistan officials dismissed Afghan media reports and official statements about the strikes on the university as “a blatant lie”.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring militants that carry out deadly attacks inside Pakistan, especially the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. The group is separate from, but allied with, the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in 2021 after the chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops. Kabul denies the charge.

Afghan and Pakistani officials met in Urumqi in western China in early April, and had agreed not to escalate their conflict, China’s government said after mediating the talks.

Monday’s strikes marked the first major attack since the discussions, highlighting the tenuous nature of peace efforts mediated by the international community. Apart from China, other nations involved in mediation at various times include Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The fighting largely subsided in March, after the two sides declared a temporary truce for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The truce followed a deadly Pakistani airstrike on 17 March on a drug treatment facility in Kabul which Afghanistan said killed more than 400 civilians. Pakistan denied targeting civilian facilities and disputed the death toll.

Sporadic cross-border fighting continued even while delegations from the two sides were attending the talks in Urumqi.

Afghan deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said Monday’s mortar and missile attack struck the city of Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, and other areas in the province.

The Kunar Information and Culture director, Najibullah Hanafi, said the death toll stood at seven, with 85 people wounded.

Fitrat said the wounded included women, children and students at the Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani University.

Afghanistan’s higher education ministry said about 30 students and professors were injured in the strike on the university.

At a hospital in Asadabad, resident Sahatullah sat beside his nephew, who he said was one of multiple people wounded in one incident.

“He was playing outside, and shelling came and hit over there,” said the 22-year-old labourer, who gave only one name.

Zmarai Kunari, a 40-year-old teacher, said one of his relatives was killed and others were hurt.

“This is my brother. He was wounded in the shelling; he had gone to pick up his uncle,” he said at the hospital.

In a statement, Pakistan’s information ministry said: “Pakistan’s targeting is precise and intelligence-based. No strike has been carried out on Sayed Jamaluddin Afghan University. The claims are frivolous and fake.”

Earlier this month, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Afghanistan said the conflict had displaced 94,000 people overall.

With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

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