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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.
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.
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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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'm glad I got grandma to sign up for Old Glory Robot Insurance.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
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.
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.