What problem does SHUGY solve?

It makes tacit hand technique visible and quantifiable in sterile cell-culture and drug-discovery work, where slight differences in flask angle or shaking speed can affect cell survival and product quality.

Why can't ordinary camera AI handle this?

General image-recognition AI learns from nail positions and skin shadows, so latex gloves hide the nails and can cause left-right hand misrecognition; instruments also create blind spots.

Which Hitachi entities were involved?

Hitachi Plant Services led customer-facing development, Hitachi, Ltd.'s R&D Group handled 3D measurement, and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems designed the safety cabinet hardware.

RoboticsAI in HealthcareTop Companies' AI MovesTop Companies AI13h agoNov 5, 2026, 06:30 JST

Hitachi's SHUGY brings 3D hand-technique AI into sterile safety cabinets

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3 Key Points

What happened
Hitachi Plant Services, Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems developed SHUGY, a hand-technique AI analysis solution that embeds multiple cameras in a safety cabinet and captures hand and tool movements as 3D data in real time.
Why it matters
The system avoids relying on a single camera's AI guesswork, which can misread left and right hands under latex gloves or when tools block the view, so sterile-process quality can be measured objectively rather than left to individual skill.

WHO IT HITSPharmaceutical and regenerative-medicine lab managers and cell-culture operators stand to gain an objective way to compare technique across staff, while quality assurance teams may get a traceable record of manual processes that were previously judged only by outcome.

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Context & Analysis

The project grew out of a long-standing pain point in regenerative medicine and drug discovery: manuals can say "shake the flask" but cannot specify the speed or range, and a failed culture may take a week to ten days to show up, making it hard to trace the cause back to a specific motion. Hitachi Plant Services started with deep customer interviews rather than pitching existing technology, and brought in Hitachi, Ltd.'s 3D measurement expertise and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems' safety-cabinet know-how under the One Hitachi banner. The hardware side required millimeter-level design so that cameras and wiring would not disturb the precisely controlled airflow inside an ISO Class 5 clean space or corrode under annual formalin gas decontamination. On the software side, the team built a 3D world coordinate system from multiple camera views to track hands and tools without depending on AI guesswork that fails under latex gloves. The result, SHUGY, is positioned as a core example of the physical AI Hitachi is pursuing.

FAQ

What problem does SHUGY solve?: It makes tacit hand technique visible and quantifiable in sterile cell-culture and drug-discovery work, where slight differences in flask angle or shaking speed can affect cell survival and product quality.
Why can't ordinary camera AI handle this?: General image-recognition AI learns from nail positions and skin shadows, so latex gloves hide the nails and can cause left-right hand misrecognition; instruments also create blind spots.
Which Hitachi entities were involved?: Hitachi Plant Services led customer-facing development, Hitachi, Ltd.'s R&D Group handled 3D measurement, and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems designed the safety cabinet hardware.

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