Robot at your service, ma146;am

FACED with a growing population of the aged and plummeting fertility rate across Japan, plans are afloat in Osaka, the robotic capital of the island, to develop robots that can take care of the aged.

FACED with a growing population of the aged and plummeting fertility rate across Japan, plans are afloat in Osaka, the robotic capital of the island, to develop robots that can take care of the aged. The city has many robotics research centres and companies, including the Osaka University, ATR and Panasonic.

The population of the aged is rapidly increasing in Japan. The ratio of people aged 65 to the whole population more than doubled from 7.1 per cent in 1970 to 20.8 in 2006. Meanwhile, the number of people aged under 15 dropped to a new postwar record low of 17.44 million in 2006, a decrease of 120,000 from the previous year.

And to confound the situation the total fertility rate is also touching a new low in Japan, perhaps lowest among the developed nations. While Japan8217;s fertility rate is 1.26 the figures for the US the UK are 2.05 and 1.84 respectively.

Says Junichi Seki, the mayor of Osaka city: 8220;We are now looking at making use of robots in helping the aged. Considering that various research centers and medium, large and small-sized companies are engaged in the filed of robotics, the city will take the lead in bringing help to the aged with robots.8221;

According to officials, many firms are working on the prototypes of such robots. They include the ones that can take care of the security aspects of the homes, the robots that can help the aged in terms of medical care, and even the kinds that can talk with the old to address their loneliness.

8220;The care for the aged is becoming a major social issue in Japan, and we need urgent interventionist steps to address the issue,8221; says Keiko Higuchi, president Women8217;s Association for a Better Aging Society, an NGO that does advocacy for a better care for the old.

She says that the changing social patterns like the many youngsters giving marriage a skip has given added to the woes of the ageing. 8220;My daughter is 38 and she is unmarried. Most youngsters now prefer to be single, which means the problem of the aged population is here to stay for a long time,8221; she says.

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And with life expectancy of 78.5, the aged and their problems need to be addressed in a better way, she reminds.