Robotic Assistants

Necessity is the mother of invention, Japan is finding out and getting quite familiar with the concept.

In an effort to combat its rapidly aging population Japan has made significant investment into robotics and cyber-kinetics in an effort to "amplify and expand its shrinking ‘human’ workforce as well as help to cater for the needs of elderly."

While most nations invest heavily in health-care and other medicinal issues, Japan has broadened its budget horizons to include these preventive treatments.

“Life Machines engages with the question of how an aging population’s needs can be met through technology. It investigates a possible future society in which humans and robots coexist in domestic spaces and asks what issues arise in a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. Questions about what kind of compromises and adjustments will have to be made are explored through scenarios of everyday routines in the relationship of an ageing individual and a robot. The design of domestic objects that reflect the needs of both machines and humans becomes a tool for exploring the human condition and our fascination with using technology to recreate ourselves.”