Aging at home
A national survey of more than 9,000 elder-care homes in Japan found only about 1 in 10 had brought in any care robot.
A dated step forward on the record
What the source says
“A major national survey of over 9,000 elder-care institutions in Japan showed that in 2019, only about 10% reported having introduced any care robot,”
What it means
Patient transfer robots, from FUJI (Hug), RIKEN with Sumitomo Riko (RIBA, ROBEAR research), is at stage 4 of 5 on our ladder: paying customers. Its stage is set by other milestones on its record; this one adds to the history.
Human help: Our sources report it working without human help.
More on Patient transfer robots
- A researcher who studied a Japanese care home reported that staff stopped using Hug after a few days, finding it bulky and slow to move between rooms.
- MIT Technology Review noted that the widely pictured ROBEAR was only ever an experiment and was never used in a real care home.
- FUJI said it had sold 1,300 Hug units in total, through care-product dealers across Japan.
- FUJI released a new model, Hug T1-02, which won an award from Japan's health and welfare ministry.
- Japanese machine maker FUJI started selling a transfer support robot, Hug.
- RIKEN and Sumitomo Riko showed ROBEAR, a lighter experimental lifting robot (140 kg, against 230 kg for the earlier RIBA-II). RIKEN later noted the project had ended.