It's no secret to that our society is getting older. More older people will stress the health care system and economy. More will require assistance in everyday activities, and, an increasingly number of us will spend time in nursing homes. It's unclear who will pay for this and how. And more importantly, it's unclear who will take care of all of these old people.
The solution, the robotics industry hopes, is technology. In Japan, where panic over an aging population is nothing new, elder care robots have been a priority for more than a decade. One of the Japanese researchers' bigger successes is Paro, a touch-sensitive companion robot — a sort of high-tech stuffed animal, shaped like a seal — for elderly people with cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's.
Japanese Nursebots can lift up elderly patients and bring them breakfast in bed, and this year, researchers from Japan's Chukyo University released Babyloid, a baby-like robot similar to Paro that looks like something that crawled out of a Miyazaki movie.
In recent years, Japanese tech giant Panasonic has created a hair-washing robot, a drug delivery robot, a robotic bed, and HOSPI-Rimo, a robot with a touchscreen that helps hospital patients communicate with doctors and family.
In the next decade, the selection of personal elder care robots is expected to expand dramatically in the West as well. "Full robots with arms are still very expensive," says Ashutosh Saxena, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell, "but they are getting cheaper by the day."
