Toyota robots to give elderly helping hand
Japanese vehicle makers are looking beyond the industry trend to develop self-driving cars and turning their attention to robots to help keep the country’s rapidly greying society on the move.
Toyota said it embraced the possibility of becoming a massproducer of robots to help the elderly in a country whose population is ageing faster than the rest of the world as the birthrate decreases.
The country’s changing demographics place its vehicle makers in a unique situation. Along with the issues usually associated with falling populations such as labour shortages and pension squeezes, Japan also faces dwindling domestic demand for cars.
Toyota, the world’s secondlargest car maker, made its first foray into commercialising rehabilitation robots on Wednesday, launching a rental service for its walk-assist system, which helps patients to learn how to walk again after suffering strokes and other conditions. Toyota’s system follows the release by Honda of its own walk-assist “robotic legs” in 2015, which was based on technology developed for its Asimo dancing robot.
“If there’s a way that we can enable more elderly people to stay mobile after they can no longer drive, we have to look beyond just cars and evolve into a maker of robots,” Toshiyuki Isobe, chief officer of Toyota’s Frontier Research Centre, said.
He said mass-producing robots would be a natural step for the company, which evolved from a loom maker in 1905 into a vehicle maker whose mission is to “make practical products which serve a purpose”.
“Be it robots or cars, if there’s a need for mass-produced robots, we should do it with gusto,” Isobe said.
GREYING FASTER
Japan is greying faster than the rest of the world, with the number of people aged 65 or older accounting for 26.7% of the population in 2015, dwarfing the global average of about 8.5%.
As a result, demand for care services for elderly people has boomed and a shrinking working population means that fewer able-bodied adults are available to look after them.
Globally, sales of robots for elderly and handicap assistance will total about 37,500 units in 2016-19 and are expected to rise substantially within the next 20 years, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
At the same time, car sales in Japan have fallen 8.5% in 2013-16 as older drivers stop buying cars, while car ownership becomes a smaller priority among younger drivers.
Like most major vehicle makers, Toyota is still competing to develop self-driving cars, committing $1bn to a robotics and artificial intelligence research centre.
Isobe said it took Toyota longer to develop robots than cars as it stretched the firm beyond its comfort zone. As a result, its new walk-assist system took more than 10 years to bring to market.
BE IT ROBOTS OR CARS, IF THERE’S A NEED FOR MASS-PRODUCED ROBOTS, WE SHOULD DO IT WITH GUSTO