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Aging Japan Looks to Bots For Care
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Yahoo! news article about robotics in Japan. While many research bots are working on interacting with their environment, some of Japan's commercial robotics are focusing on building bots for elderly care. From the article: "The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face. 'In the future, we would like to develop a capacity to detect a human's health condition through his breath,' Mukai said. Japan is bracing for a major increase in needs for elderly care due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world's longest living." That sure sounds familiar.
There was an older article (six months to a year and a half ago, maybe) about the elderly in Japan turning to robots.
The article had an especially strong lead paragraph about an immigrant who would never be able to get a job taking care of the elderly because she was a foreigner and because she wasn't a robot; the point of the article was that racism is so strong in Japan that old people actually shy away from a human's touch when the human isn't the right kind, and that they prefer robots. (Well, that was one possible conclusion -- certainly there are others.)
Does anyone remember seeing this? Any hints on how to track it down?
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
The problem with this type of research is that the elderly are among the least able to pay for the development in this area. Monies must be siphoned from other profitable medical areas like pediatrics and radiology in order to pay for advancements in elderly and hospice care.
It makes sense, then, that the guy's name is Mukai. 'Mu' means 'none' or 'no' in Japanese. 'Kai' means 'shell'. So Mr. No Shells can also be read as Mr. No Clams. And if you ain't got no clams, you're one poor dude.
A Japanese girlfriend of mine has a sick mother who needs constant care all of the time. Nobody is at home to look after her. The father needs to work to pay the bills. She doesn't want to quit her job to stay home to look after her. It is expensive to live in Japan, and it's boring to stay home and look after parents. She doesn't want to do it... in fact none of the family want to do it. She doesn't want to throw her future and career away to do it. Her whole family feels that her mother is a real burden to everyone else, and the whole family wishes that she would just go into a hospital and not be an extra thorn in everyone's lifestyle.
I just can't help but feel that it's very sad that it comes down to needing a robot, but I guess lifestyles and nuclear families are upsetting Japan's old age care system.
READY.
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In countries near and around japan labor is cheap, dirt cheap. Philipines, Malaysia, Taiwan, the list can go on. I'd expect this robot to cost no less than 70-80k and would only be for the extremely wealthy %1 of the population.
For the average japanese joe in thier sunset years, they're more likely to import labor from other countries to work in thier nursing home facilities (why not? We already import Filipino nurses like crazy in california) for the price of 1 robot, you could pay the salary of 4 imported nurses, or a nursing home facility.
And despite the report saying there is a decline in birth rates, everyone has family to lean on at some point.
Realistically, would you want to be taken care of a cold, unloving robot that couldn't imagine what I was feeling? What's this thing going to do, detect if I stop breathing and call the coroner? No thanks.
Anime has already tackled this subject by none other than the creator of the pop-culture anime-film AKIRA.
1 42849877/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-2542910-4413459?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130 ) was an anime film about a computerized hospital bed that is supposed to care for an elderly patient. However, the computer turns out to be a prototype for a battle robot and to top it off, the damn thing takes on the personality of his former wife, and therein starts a chase through Japan, tearing up the countryside, as the bed tries to take the patient on a trip to the beach, one last time.
Roujin Z ( See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/630506251X/qid=1
Overall, it's a pretty decent film and very amusing as well.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Do you really want memories of wars, of terrorising leaders, of the horrors of Facism and Stalinism to die alongside these people? If you've lived through 5 dictatorships, and 5 democracies, you have a better judgement of what is right than if you live healthy for just 65 years, and live half you life wanting change, then half your life regretting it, feeling the old days where better.
I have a Portuguese girlfriend, and she tells me the young population of Portugal today sometimes says they think they need a "dictator light" to settle things in the country. My girl's father was a resistance memeber back in the 70's, and you cannot belive his horror when he hears this.
In the same way, when I was in school, I had the honour of doing a project to interview a WW2 veteran. It made a strong impression on me, and I am now working in an academic instutions researching conflict prevention. The veteran is now dead, and I belive I will never be able to transmit the same impression of war to my kids unless I - God forbid - experience it myself.
I belive one day we will be able to cure the condition known as aging. You don't need people to grow old and die. What a horrid statement... to die may be natural, but to live is a gift unlike any you will ever recive.
. Knut
P.s. of course, in the long run you'll need to expand beyond the mother nest to sustain a longer living population, but that is for a different debate. Eternal life has to come with supporting technologies, or it will surely kill the human race in its cradle.
>> Hell... Wouldn't it be better if those people were around today? I'm still sure Newton would have loved to have all the tools our scientists have today.
Newton probably would have used his clout to condemn Einsteins theory that exposed flaws in his own. That is, if he dragged himself away from searching for bible codes, which is what he spent the last part of his life on.