Aging Japan builds robot to look after elderly - Yahoo! News

Aging Japan builds robot to look after elderly - Yahoo! News A glimpse of a robotic medical future.

Covered by five millimeters (0.2 inches) soft silicone, RI-MAN is equipped with sensors that show it a body's weight and position.


The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face.


"In the future, we would like to develop a capacity to detect a human's health condition through his breath," Mukai said.

This may seem strange but many metabolic problems chane the odor of the breath such as ketoacidosis from extremely high blood sugar as seen in Diabetics
Japan is bracing for a major increase in needs for elderly care due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world's longest living.


The population declined in 2005 for the first time since World War II as more young people put off starting families.