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

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.