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.

Comments

before you bring out the "racism"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard of this before, on /. I suspect, and I recall that the reason put forward for the Japanese preference for robotic workers rather than cheap third world labour was racism.
Now, I don't know if that's a factor or not (it hasn't seemed to be to me). What I think is a major factor is the fact that Japan is already incredibly crowded, not to mention in an Earthquake/tsunami zone where no-one should be living anyway. So robots aren't a bad idea.

Re:before you bring out the "racism"...

[WindBourne]

It is more likely that Japan is trying to create a new industry. They have done that for quite some time. The xenophboia of Japan is way too overstated. It is akin to saying that Bush (and the gov.) screwed up Katrina response due to N.O. being dominately black. While I do not like Bush/crew, not for a second, I would not believe that.