Confirming its status as leader in the global robotics market, the Japanese government announced Wednesday that it would begin developing safety rules for the development of robot nurses, which are expected to begin serving the country’s rapidly aging population within five years. One government official was quoted as saying, “As aging of the population is a common problem for developed countries, Japan wants to become an advanced country in the area of addressing the aging society with the use of robots.” According to a report in the March 25th edition of The Straits Times , the Japanese population has a high life expectancy and low birth rate, and is facing a shortage of caregivers for elderly people. To mediate this issue, the country has loosened its tight immigration rules to invite hundreds of nurses from the Philippines and Indonesia to come and work in Japan. An official from Japan’s Ministry of Trade and Industry announced that a new group called the Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization will launch a five-year project in April to improve safety standards for next-generation robots.
Robo Nurses have not been unique to Japan alone, however. A research team at Warwick University in England is well into a three year 2.7 million dollar project to develop a robot nurse, and experts believe, based on the outcomes of this research, that nurses could be delegating tasks to robotic colleagues by 2020. The name of the England project is IWARD – Intelligent Robot Swarm for Attendance, Recognition, Cleaning and Delivery – and was supported by European Union funding in January 2007. According to a news release last year, Professor Vinesh Raja, research leader at Warwick University, explained some of the projected outcomes of the IWARD technology: “We hope to develop it further so they can respond to spoken commands and physical gestures, but results of the first hospital trial in Spain have been very good. I do think that by 2020 we will see teams of robots working alongside human staff in British hospitals, but they could also serve a vital surveillance role in many other public places, such as shopping malls and airports, in light of terror threats.”
In addition to its plans for introducing Robotic Nurses, Japan has already experimented with home service robots. The most notable case is Wakamaru, the Linux-powered robot produced by Mitsubishi and introduced to the market in 2005 for a price tag of almost $9000 U.S. The yellow robot is just under 4 feet tall, can move around the house at up to 1Km/hr while avoiding obstacles and people, and is mounted with a panoramic top-of-head camera that allows it to identify its position in the house according to the ceiling. In addition, Wakamaru comes equipped with speech recognition technology enabling it to identify 10,000 Japanese words. No longer available for purchase, Wakamaru has since taken up a job as salesrobot at the newly opened UNIQLO Soho store in New York city—Japan’s largest global casual wear retail outlet.
The planned development of the next generation of service robots is certain to further solidify Japan’s standing in the global robotics market. Already, approximately 70 per cent of the world’s industrial robots are made by Japanese companies. The trade ministry expects Japan’s robotics market to grow to 6.2 trillion yen (63.5 billion dollars) in 2025 from 70 million yen last year. In contrast to Japan, the United States has targeted its robotics development efforts primarily on industrial and military applications. By 2010, for example, the U.S. will have invested $4 billion in a research programs into robots for military applications.
Whether applied to home service, military, or industrial applications, robots are quickly becoming part of a new global technological paradigm that will have far-reaching effects on future social, cultural, and economic structures. Speaking to a trade conference in January 2007, Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, argued that that the field of robotics is currently in the same position as the computer industry was in the mid-1970s on the verge of the Home PC explosion. Given the outcomes of the home computer and internet, this is a rather amazing statement. So sit down, buckle up, and hold tight . . . the robotics revolution has just begun!
Tags: future of robotics, human robot interaction, humanoid robot, Japanese robotics, robo nurse, robot nurse
