Aged Care Insite Issue 100 | April-May 2017 | Seite 42

technology
Aye, robot
The use of robots in aged care
will be centre stage in a research
project between Australian
and Japanese universities.
Anthony Elliott interviewed
by Dallas Bastian
A
ustralian and Japanese researchers will come together
to examine the ways in which robotic technology and
artificial intelligence (AI) can deliver greater efficiencies
in care and help fill gaps in labour shortages, as part of a new
research project.
University of South Australia (UniSA) researchers will collaborate
with Japanese institutions, Keio University and Rissho University,
to map advances in robotics and AI, with a focus on the social
consequences for lifestyle change and aged care.
Anthony Elliott, professor of sociology and dean of external
engagement at UniSA, has been awarded a two-year Toyota
Foundation Research Grant for the project, which will allow the
team to compare the use of robotics in aged care in both Australia
and Japan. Aged Care Insite sits down with Elliott to find out how
robots are used in the two countries and what roles they might
play in the future of aged care.
ACI: In what ways is Japan using robotics in the aged care
sphere? Are there any applications we’re yet to see in Australia?
AE: Yes, there are a number and I guess it’s not surprising. Many
people know that Japan has an interesting demographic curve.
You’ve got 25 per cent of the population there now already over
65. When it comes to the intersections of today’s technology
revolution, everything from digital transformation, cloud computing,
3D printing and so on, but right through to artificial intelligence
and especially robotics, they are streets ahead. This is an exciting
project for the team to win from Toyota, because we’re very eager
now to look at the myriad ways in which robotics are being used in
aged care and particularly the way in which personal robotic and
humanoid care is being deployed now for elderly people.
What uses of robot care are we seeing in Australia and what
might we be seeing in the coming years?
The Australian situation is in a very different stage of development.
40 agedcareinsite.com.au
Of course, much of that I think is cultural as well as technological.
It’s not just that we don’t have access to the technology, because
[…] clearly AI and robots are being increasingly ushered into
various employment areas in Australia. I think the reason why in
Australian care settings that things are still at a more rudimentary
level is partly cultural.
It’s well known that Japanese culture has been held in thrall
to inanimate objects. There’s quite a different relationship to the
inanimate compared to Australia.
One of the key things about this project is that artificial intelligence,
when you think about it, has largely been the reserve of disciplines
such as computer science and maths and neuroscience and so on.
The word artificial there has come to denote, I guess, machines
that can be made to replicate or simulate human intelligence. We’re
interested in that, but we’re also interested in the ways now that
artificial intelligence goes all the way down, all the way down right
into the very fabric of human relationships, right into the very textures
of human identities.
It’s a fascinating question about the ways in which humanoid
robot personal care assistants, for example, are responded to in
quite a positive sense in Japan, with people feeling not only that it
provides an increased capacity for privacy, and for continuing to
lead a healthy kind of lifestyle, but the ways in which in Japanese
culture there is this positive evaluation of being able to emotionally
connect to robots in a way that’s very different to much of the
Western culture of individualism.
The project aims to deliver insights and a policy focus
assessment of the application of robotic care for the ageing.
You touched on that a little bit there, but what else would that
research home in on?
We will be looking at elderly care and care environments,
contrasting what’s happening in a number of cities. Principally,
Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, and in Australia, Melbourne, Brisbane
and Adelaide. A lot of the policy discussion has been to date
about the way in which robotics is impacting elderly care and the
personal lives and the environments of the elderly, particularly in
terms of the arrival of things like smart homes.
Obviously, many of these developments have been ve