Toyota wants a robot in every home
tokyo — Toyota Motor has sold enough cars to put one outside every Japanese home. Now it wants to put robots inside.
Well-known for its automated assembly lines, Toyota sees a notso-far-off future in which robots transcend the factory and become commonplace in homes, helping with chores — and even offering companionship — in an aging society where a quarter of the population is over 65 and millions of seniors live alone.
Machines have become much smarter in the last decade or so. Yet, every attempt to build one that can do simple things like load a washing machine or carry groceries encounters the same basic, physical problem: the stronger a robot gets, the heavier and more dangerous it becomes. What Toyota has going for it are $29 billion in cash reserves, a new artificial intelligence research center and a well-respected inventor, Gill Pratt, heading its effort.
Toyota has been experimenting with robots since at least 2004, when it unveiled a trumpet-playing humanoid with artificial lips, lungs and movable fingers that could accompany an actual human orchestra.
Since then research has become more practical. Toyota’s latest android, the T-HR3, is a kind of avatar that can be manipulated remotely via wearable controls, with vision goggles that allow users to see through the machine’s cameraeyes. The device could one day serve as arms and legs for the bedridden, or as a surrogate for relief workers in disaster zones.
Toyota says the need for eldercare will change that. The automaker illustrates the point with a chart showing Japan’s inverted agepyramid in the year 2050, when a third-fewer workers will have to support twice as many old people as today. (Some 22 per cent of the world’s population will be over 60 by then, according to the World Health Organisation.)
Toyota’s Human Support Robot, or HSR, is the machine the automaker sees as closest to making the leap from lab to living room. The robotequivalent of a Corolla — all function and no frills — the HSR is basically a retractable arm on wheels with a video screen on top and two large camera eyes that give it the rudiments of a face. It weighs as much as a half-dozen bowling balls, but can only lift a 1.2kg payload, about the weight of a medium-sized water bottle.