Robots to replace 3.5 million Japanese

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 8 Apr 2008 at 13:44

Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in Japan by 2025, helping to avert the ageing nation's worker shortages, according to a thinktank.

Japan faces a 16% slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.

The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from micro-sized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.

Rather than each robot replacing one person, the foundation said in a report that robots could make time for people to focus on more important things.

Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don't have to rely on human nursing care, the foundation claims in its report.

Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did housework, it adds. Robotic duties could include reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly.

"Seniors are pushing back their retirement until they are 65-years-old, day-care centers are being built so that more women can work during the day, and there is a move to increase the quota of foreign laborers. But none of these can beat the shrinking workforce," says Takao Kobayashi, who worked on the study.

"Robots are important because they could help in some ways to alleviate such shortage of the labor force."

Kobayashi said changes was still needed for robots to make a big impact on the workforce.

"There's the expensive price tag, the functions of the robots still need to improve, and then there are the mindsets of people," he adds. "People need to have the will to use the robots."