A Japanese vegetable juice company has designed a new a wearable robot that dispenses tomatoes for people to eat while on the go.

Tomatan is a robot that can be worn as a backpack. Weighing 8kg (18 pounds), it features a tomato shaped head with a mouth that opens to dispense the tomato into circular metal arms that then come down over the person's mouth to feed them a tomato.

Why would anyone need this, you might ask? Well, according to Kagome, which claims to be Japan's largest supplier of tomato juice and tomato ketchup, people running the Tokyo marathon really need this.

"Tomatoes have lots of nutrition that combats fatigue," Kagome employee Shigenori Suzuki told Deccan Chronicle.

Kagome worked together with a Japanese artistic studio known as Maywa Denki, which is well known for making unusual musical instruments and other devices.

"We used about 100 tomatoes to complete this machine," said Novmichi Tosa, one of the founders of Meiwa Denki. "We focused mostly on its visual design."

Suzuki will be representing Kagome in the Tokyo Marathon on Saturday 21 February and intends to wear the Tomatan robot during a 5km fun run, with Tosa running beside him with tools just in case the robot stops working or Suzuki encounters a problem.

Then on Sunday 22 February during the full Tokyo Marathon, a professional runner from Kagome will take part using a lighter version of the tomato robot known as Petit-Tomatan.

Petit-Tomatan weighs just 3kg and features a mini tomato holster that is worn on the back.

As this robot is much smaller, the runner will need to hold a delivery tube up to their mouth, but the robot features a timer so the runner does not ingest too many tomatoes at one go and deplete their supply too quickly.