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

Looking for an article

[AEton]

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?

Re:Looking for an article

[jbarham]

You're probably thinking of this article.

No money in this research

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:No money in this research

[patio11]

Oh, the Japanese government is quite happy to throw LOTS of money at this problem. We're spending a couple million of it two floors below me as we speak. If you're ever find yourself in Gifu, drop by and we'll arrange for a demonstration (although, in fairness, the private industry bots kick our tail in every possible way -- my memory is getting a little rusty but I think it was the Honda bot that had our department head very vexed about after he saw it at the Aichi Expo). Our researchers are throwing most of their time at the hardware (cameras, mainly) and image processing algorithms/challenges.

www.softopia.or.jp , although I don't think you'll find anything interesting about this project in specific if you can't read Japanese. But, anyhow, just trust me, How To Deal With Our Aging Society gets mentioned often enough in seminars here that you'd think it was Dilbertized like "business synergy paradigm" or something.

Pity the US doesn't think so...

[dcapel]

We have the problem of people in high places just looking out for themselves -- caring for them won't be their problem; life-extension or other medical advances won't be in developed in time to help them, etc.

And the sad part is, when younger people get into those places, we will probably do that same thing.

The price is around 40 million yen I hear

[KNicolson]

Versus about 4 million yen for a real live nurse, if only Japan was more accepting of foreign labour to look after all the old folk.

Avoid the parents.

[Neo-Rio-101]

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.

Re:Avoid the parents.

[patio11]

Lifestyles and the changing family structure is one part of the consideration... the other is just plain old demographics. Japan is aging, fast. The birthrate is slowing to a crawl. I don't have a copy of the powerpoint slide on me (saw it at our research meeting last week, I work for the gov't here and a lot of the research involves "how to equip society to deal with a lot of aged folks", including a portion of our robot research) at the second but the Ministry of Health & Welfare forcasts 1 out of every 3 Japanese to be over the age of 65 by either 2020 or 2050.

There is no way you can make one-to-one care work at that proportion. Japan is currently experimenting with a variety of methods for alleviating this: the current profusion of old folks homes, for example, breaks the traditional one-caretaker-who-is-probably-a-daughter-or-inlaw- per-elderly paradigm. Then there are bots and immigration. I guess I benefit rather directly from policies which encourage the later :) But in the end its going to have to be a confluence of efforts.

Of course, this problem on the societal scale is closely related to the low birthrate (Japan hovers at something like, off the top of my head, 1.1). Yeah. Combine that with an average life expectancy which is the highest in the world and increases every year and demographics sure look like destiny.

The robot has a home page

[KNicolson]

He's called RI-MAN, Robot Interacting with huMAN. No word on his pushing or shoving capabilities, vis-a-vis a stair-rich environment.

I for one....

[Whiteox]

I for one, welcome our breath-smelling robot overlords!

Be sure to have Robot Insurance just incase...

[Bushido Hacks]

I'm glad I got grandma to sign up for Old Glory Robot Insurance.

Re:Screw intelligent robots!

[Profound]

You need people to get old and die.

Most people who lived believing that demonic posession rather than germs were responsible for sickness died still believing it. They were just eventually replaced by people whose minds were open to new theories.

If people don't die die, old (wrong) ideas will never die, and humans will never improve.

Roujin Z

[tekrat]

Anime has already tackled this subject by none other than the creator of the pop-culture anime-film AKIRA.

Roujin Z ( See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/630506251X/qid=11 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.

Overall, it's a pretty decent film and very amusing as well.