In August, this Japanese 'Kangaroo robot' will arrive for work at a convenience store to stack sandwiches, drinks and ready meals on shelves.

If the experiment succeeds, retailer FamilyMart says it will employ more robot workers at twenty stores around Tokyo by 2022.

The robots will be operated remotely by people until the artificial intelligence has learnt to mimic workers, according to Telexistance CEO, Jin Tomioka.

"The humans manipulate the robot to do all the shelf re-stocking jobs in the convenience store."

Robots outperform humans in highly-organized manufacturing plants, but still struggle with simple tasks in unpredictable surroundings.

Solving that problem could restart an automation push that has halted at the factory floor and help businesses in greying industrialised nations, particularly Japan, cope with fewer workers.

Why a kangaroo?

Well the firm's CEO likes marsupials, but it's also to help customers feel at ease,

after complaints that an earlier, more humanoid, model was frightening.

"The humans should not fear the robot is an enemy or something. I think Japan has more leeway to work with or live with robots. Because, as you said, from anime we see robots as heroes. Western people, on the other hand, see robots as machines."