Nowadays in Japan, the real-life robots are everywhere – from hospitals and nursing homes, to schools and even airports and train stations. The elderly know ‘robear’, a strong but gentle machine that helps patients into wheelchairs and supports them to and from the bathroom. Young children are friends with ‘vevo’, another friendly bear who greets them every morning at their primary schools and monitors their heart rates as they nap after lunch.
This is the future for all of us. Robots have already removed thousands of jobs from the manufacturing industry. It is relatively easy to programme a machine to do what a team of workers are already doing – such as assembling or painting a car – but hard to do with matters that cannot be so easily foretold.
Every midnight thousands of toilers begin to work on dimly lit production lines, assembling ‘bento’ boxes. These are the universal luncheon boxes of Japanese workers, and consist of a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. But the ‘this’ and ‘that’ depend on tomorrow’s expected weather, the daily supply and cost of different foods, and the chef’s expertise.
Despite considerable investment and a strong desire to succeed, no robot has yet been able to handle the picking and packing of the chef’s choice in a bento box. Perhaps the requirements of the average human can be forecast, but the individual still surprises, and this is why humans are needed to manage ‘robear’ and ‘vevo’, and pack bento boxes.
Scaling up the care worker
The dreams that led to the TMT (tech, media and telecom) bubble of the late 1990s were imaginative but impossible. It was only the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 that made them a potential reality.
For the first time in history anyone could have a powerful and flexible computer, not just in an office but in his or her pocket. That handheld computer is now bringing about the ‘internet of things’.
This may also give the care worker and nurse the freedom to concentrate on what humans do best – to give comfort when needed, talk with and care for their patients, knowing that their information equipment is monitoring the life signs of those in their care, maintaining all necessary records, checking food and other tastes and needs, and advising them when human interaction is needed by the patient.
