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My robot and I: Japanese stories of technology and old age
In the country with the highest life expectancy in the world — currently facing the crisis of an aging population — scientists, healthcare professionals and technology companies are coming together to fight against problems such as loneliness, cognitive deterioration and loss of mobility
The predisposition of the Japanese to connect emotionally with machines was explained in 2007 by the then-academic — and now businesswoman — Naho Kitano, in an essay in which she made reference to the animist tradition of Shintoism, the local religion that attributes spiritual life to inanimate objects. When held in your arms, it moves gently, makes realistic cooing sounds and looks at you with enormous eyes that often generate feelings of relief or tenderness in older people, including those who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, or other cognitive disorders or impairments. He’s in a rehabilitation session that utilizes HAL, an intelligent exoskeleton created by Yoshiyuki Sankai.Noriko Hayashi (Panos Pictures /Robotics — when applied to elderly care — benefits from technological advances in the automotive sector, where the improvement of the self-driving car largely depends on the interaction between humans and machines.
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