Astra

About Astra

Astra is a humanoid robot under development by Telexistence Inc., a robotics company based in Tokyo, Japan. It is being created in partnership with Seven-Eleven Japan, which announced the collaboration in 2025 to jointly develop, validate, and introduce humanoid robots powered by generative AI in convenience stores. Astra is built around a Vision-Language-Action foundation model that integrates perception, planning, and control end to end, so the robot can interpret what it sees, understand language instructions, and generate the physical actions needed to complete multi-step retail tasks. The stated aim is to have Astra take on routine in-store operations, easing labor shortages and rising costs while freeing staff for customer-facing work. Telexistence plans to draw on data from its existing Ghost restocking robots and to work with research partners in Japan, including groups tied to the University of Tokyo, Waseda University, and Toyota, to build the datasets needed to train the system. Deployment across Seven-Eleven's large store network is targeted for 2029, so Astra remains a development-stage platform rather than a shipping product.