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Robotic Bubble Baths for Japan's Elderly
LukePieStalker writes "New York Times (open kimono before entering) is carrying an article on various robots that are being used in assisted living situations. In addition to mentioning the Wakamaru, the story has illustrations of a human washing machine and a description of robotic pants that help those with mobility problems. Apparently, the devices are considered the better choice in a country that is not inclined to grant working visas to foreigners. As Japan's population shrinks, will the robot population make up the difference?"
Soylent Green. Its a wonderful idea. You take your dead and make little biscuits so that the young can benefit from the dead, instead of them being a parasitic load on the youth.
-Coward for an obvious reason
We need those robots here too, so we don't have to see anymore headlines about old people being beaten by their caretakers or left to lie in their own excrements for weeks.
Japan is notoriously not handicapped accessibility friendly; seems the robotic mobility assistance would be a necessity.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
The future should, hopefully, be fillled with robotic slaves to carry out our every whim :)
But seriously, the next logical progression in a technologically advancing society is to replace menial labour with automated systems, we have already done it with the factory production system, and the next step is the services industry.
As long as we dont give them unnecessary AI and for some reason equip robots designed to clean houses with tactical thermonuclear devices, we wont have to worry about any robotic revolutions.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
the devices are considered the better choice in a country that is not inclined to grant working visas to foreigners
That's misguided and inaccurate. If you meet the criteria of having a 3 or 4 year degree, and a company values you enough to sponsor you, you can get a working visa.
Always remember, work visa arrangements between countries are reciprocal. If you find it hard to get a visa for Japan, chances are Japanese people find it much harder to get a visa for your country.
Oh, and if you want a job wiping up after old people, I'm sure the Ministry of Immingration will make an exception for you.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Well you make a REALLY good point here.
Lets say that you import or hire workers to take care of the elderly. Are they going to be making a huge salary? NO, because those jobs are literally shit, and you get very little respect. If you were to pay more then health care costs sky-rocket.
Frankly on this issue the Japanese have the right attitude. Hire less professionals, pay them more and overall you have a better system. Instead of forcing the professionals to do "grunt" work let them focus on interacting with the elderly.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
These aren't robots to keep them company. They're robots to keep them clean and robots to help them with everyday tasks. Get a grip on the situation and get off your soapbox.
I suppose in your world we shouldn't allow old people to drive cars because then they'd be lonely. Instead, we should have 6 fit young men carrying each old person around on a litter.
Instead of impersonal cooking machines, like microwaves, we can just hire teams of people to breathe heavily on the food until it's cooked. Heavens forbid that old people use a "technical solution" to cook their food.
I wonder what you might say if I explained to you the concept of a phone; a "technical solution" that allows for *greater* human interaction. Probably your head would explode as you tried to reconcile the paradox.
Stop being such a drongo. Robots to keep the elderly clean is a great thing. It means they'll receive better care, at an affordable price, and they can clean themselves when they want to rather than when the overworked nurse is available. A nurse, by the way, who could actually improve the quality of their patients lives if they weren't wasting their valuable time giving sponge baths.
I wonder how those trousers work exactly, someone would still be needed to help the elderly use the "trousers" and explain the functions of the machine.
Now what if the machine doesn't stop? That could be cause of anxiety for people not used to technology.
I have mixed feelings about this, cleaning and feeding is often the only moment were elderly share time with another human presence.
Would this device not bring more loneliness and more depression, in a time where family solidarity and help seems to gradually dissolve?
I doubt it would bring additional independence, although it would be practical in medical environments and lead to needing less staff, it could contribute to isolate the person with mobility problems even more.
In Japan you can boot perfumed and coloured, what is the next step into metamorphosing us into machines?
This will also happen in the U.S. and other developed contries as the cost of these robots drops below the labor cost of employing people. Manufactured goods continue to grow cheaper every day while labor continues to become more expensive. I'm sure that some people won't like the idea of being cared for by robots, but most people will take the cheaper option when they discover the high cost of hiring someone (or their long-term care insurance refuses to reimburse them for high-labor cost care).
And if the U.S. passes jobs protection laws like those in Europe, I bet that the trend toward replacing people will accelerate. Low interest rates also help this trend by making it cheap (per month) to own an expensive piece of capital equipment. Add to that the fact that robots won't steal from you, take sick days, or quit when they are tired of caring for crotchety old coots, and this trend is inevitable.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... until the robot accidentally drowns some geezer in the tub! Or maybe not accidentally - some evil person hacks it to drown their old man to hurry up the inheritance...
Japan's very different. Traditionally, women were slaves to their families, in a sense. When parents became too infirm, that was it for their daughters.... years of subservient home-care lay ahead, with no hope of reprieve until death.
So you can view this as "packing the parents off to the home" or as "the long term impact of freedom for women."
Maybe eventually Japan will be able to move back towards cring for the elderly at hhome in a more reasonable, non-oppressive way. In any of the developed nations, though, there aren't enough children to go around... negative birth rates mean that SOMEONE won't have children to take care of them. Nursing homes are the only reasonable way that currently exists to sort of shift the elderly of the last generation on to the young of the new immigrants.