Toyota Unveils Helpful Human Support Robot

cylonlover writes "Toyota has unveiled a new assistant robot designed to help the disabled live more independently. Called the Human Support Robot (HSR), it represents the latest initiative in Toyota's Partner Robot program and is intended to help out around the home by fetching things, opening curtains, and picking up objects that have fallen to the floor. The HSR can be controlled using a simple graphical user interface via tablet PC. It can also wear a tablet atop its head, which would allow caregivers and family members to communicate with the robot's owner over Skype or other services. But unlike recent telepresence robots including the recently announced iRobot RP-VITA, the HSR has an arm and gripper for doing the simple tasks we often take for granted."

Comments

Cost savings?

[whydavid]

If the robot came with an attached blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, and a few other things, it could also be applied to telemedicine. Since getting to the doctor's office is a huge challenge for many disabled folks, this could be a great opportunity. The telemedicine thing has and is currently being done, so this would really just be enhancing the robot with functionality that has already been prototyped, tested, and, in some cases, already deployed. If we're going to do this, let's go for the gold. Picking things up and enabling better communication is a great start, but becoming an all-around health companion and lifeline would take this to the next level and perhaps help it see uptake outside of robot-loving Japan.