Desperate for workers, aging Japan turns toward robots for healthcare
TSUKUBA, Japan — In America and other aging societies around the world, it has become common for the elderly to be cared for by their graying children or older workers. That’s largely because the younger labor force is shrinking, and few want to do such low-paying, back-aching work.
Japan sees an answer in robots. At Minami Tsukuba nursing home near Tokyo, caregiver Asami Konishi wears a robotic device on her hips that cuts the stress on her back when she bends and lifts someone.
“It really helps when I have to pick up a heavier male patient,” said the 34-year-old.
The lumbar device and other cyborg suits made by Cyberdyne Inc. can help the wearer build strength and restore mobility, like standing up and walking. Cyberdyne’s gear works by reading bioelectric signals from the brain to the muscles, thus mimicking and supporting the movement intended.
“It fuses the human and robots and information systems,” said Yoshiyuki Sankai, an engineer who founded Cyberdyne in 2004.
Other bigger, more familiar Japanese firms also are developing robots to target the enfeebled and elderly. Panasonic makes a robotic bed that transforms into a wheelchair. Sony’s robot puppy and other “carerobo” animals are seen as therapy for loneliness and dementia.
“Just looking at it makes people smile, exercising their facial muscles,” said Kenshin Noguchi, Minami Tsukuba’s business promotion manager, referring to Paro, the name of a furry baby seal robot designed by Japan’s Intelligent Systems Research.
Paro, which costs about $3,700, reacts to touch, sound and light. A hand grazes its whiskers and Paro’s head and legs move. Paro also blinks and lets out a harp seal’s cry. At Minami Tsukuba, the robot usually sits on the office counter by the front door, where residents pass by and stroke or hug it.
Rec time at the Shintomi nursing home in Tokyo includes a sing-along led by Pepper, a 4-foot-tall, big-eyed humanoid robot. SoftBank, the telecommunications and finance giant, has sold some 16,000 of them, mostly to retailers and banks in Japan. Pepper interacts with customers, answering common questions (Where’s the bathroom?) and making product pitches.
“In Japan, they can’t create people fast enough to fill more remedial jobs,” said Collin Sebastian, head of engineering at SoftBank Robotics America, a 100-employee division based in San Francisco that opened about three years ago.
Indeed, Japan’s lead in advanced robotics for healthcare is driven by its demographic conundrum. More than most, the nation’s population is shrinking and aging rapidly. Already more than a quarter of its population is 65 or older (compared with 16% in the United States), and by 2050, that’s expected to rise to around 40% in Japan. Even now elderly are taking care of elderly.
Culture also plays a role in Japan’s embrace of robots. Many Japanese grew up with Astro Boy, the robotic child with X-ray vision and an ability to fly that was created in the 1950s and serialized in manga comics and television.
“Robotics is part of their lives. There’s appreciation for that type of technology and novelty,” said Sebastian.
The United States has been slower to adopt robots. Experts think that’s partly due to unrealistic expectations and partly to fear. American consumers want robots to perform like humans, and yet there’s apprehension that may have come from Hollywood’s depiction of cyborgs and artificial intelligence in popular movies such as “The Terminator” and “The Matrix.”
At another level, people fear robots as job killers. When Sebastian and his SoftBank colleague made the rounds this month on Capitol Hill, many of the questions centered on how advances in robotics would affect existing American jobs. Industrial robots have long been deployed by U.S. manufacturers, such as robotic arms that weld car parts at assembly plants.
To be sure, automation has eliminated a lot of routine work. But Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank, says productivity statistics over the last decade suggest it’s not been nearly so bad in manufacturing.
Even then, he said, substituting human labor with robots may not be a bad thing when there aren’t enough workers to do certain tasks, whether its picking strawberries, stocking shelves or caring for the elderly.
Although the United States isn’t aging as fast as Japan, America’s 65and-over population already numbers more than 52 million, and that is projected to nearly double by 2060, when the elderly will make up about one out of four Americans.