RI-MAN Humanoid Robot
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 18:07 
The RI-MAN robot carries a life-sized doll at the Riken laboratory in Nagoya, central Japan.... TOKYO: Faced with both a rapidly-aging long-lived population and a declining birth rate, and much more hesitant to open its borders to immigrants like other countries with the same problems, Japan is looking to robotics as a solution to caring for its many elderly citizens. RI-MAN is a five-foot tall humanoid robot built to carry human beings. It’s equipped with sensors to keep track of a body’s weight and position, can distinguish between eight different smells and the direction a voice is coming from, as well as track the movement of a face.
"We're hoping that through future study it will eventually be able to care for elderly people or work in rehabilitation," said Toshiharu Mukai, one of the research team leaders.
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.
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.
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