The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and NEDO formally entrusted the development of physical AI foundation models to the consortium Noetra, consisting of 44 companies including SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Physical AI controls robots and equipment in the physical world, with the 2026-2030 national project investing up to 6.1 billion yen to develop multimodal foundation models that integrate language, image, video, and sensor data.

The project is driven by serious labor shortages due to aging demographics. Automating manufacturing, logistics, and caregiving with autonomous AI robots is positioned as an urgent national priority. The goal is to have 1 million AI robots operational across 18 sectors by 2040.