The Japanese love gadgets. First, it was the Japanese Boyfriend pillow,
Now, they are inventing Robots to care for the elderly. Regarding the Robot in the top picture,
A Japanese-led research team said it had made a seeing, hearing and smelling robot that can carry human beings and is aimed at helping care for the country’s growing number of elderly. Government-backed research institute Riken said the 158-centimeter (five-foot) RI-MAN humanoid can already carry a doll weighing 12 kilograms (26 pounds) and could be capable of bearing 70 kilograms within five years.
The Robot can detect odors,
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.
The Japanese have also invented Robot assist limbs,
The purpose is,
A researcher at Japan’s University of Tsukuba, Sankai has developed a robotic suit designed to make it easier for elderly people with weak muscles to move around or for care-givers to lift them.
The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armor. It straps onto a person’s arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs.
When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person’s motions.
Here is a Robot bath invented by the Japanese for the elderly,
One of the most labor-intensive nursing home tasks is bathing frail residents. For this job, Sanyo Electric has introduced what is essentially a robot bathtub. Costing about $50,000, it closes around a patient who is seated in a wheelchair. The wash and rinse cycles operate automatically. A nurse’s aide takes care of washing hair and toweling the resident off. Japan’s need for elder-care robots is partially driven by a falloff in its national birthrate, which has left the country with too few young to care for the old.
There are even robot dogs for the elderly,
OHBU, Japan – The elderly patients suffer from severe dementia, but their faces light up when they see the dog-shaped robot, swaddled in soft clothing, waddle around the hospital floor. Some clap; others break into feeble smiles. Urged by nurses, a few cautiously reach out and touch it.
“It’s cute,” one female patient cries out.
This is one in a budding series of robot-therapy sessions at Japanese hospitals and senior citizens’ homes. To some scientists, robots are the answer to caring for aging societies in Japan and other nations where the young are destined to be overwhelmed by a surging elderly population.
I could live with a robot bath, but a robot dog?
