http://www.mext.go.jp/english/news/2007/03/07022214/001/004.htm
1.2.1 Science and Technology to Respond to Demographic
Change
Summary
As a nation facing an aging society with fewer children it
is necessary to bear and raise healthy children, maintain health
throughout life and stretch the potential abilities of each
individual to the fullest. To achieve this there is a need to
clarify the mechanisms of biological phenomena and various
diseases, and to develop the means to prevent, diagnose and treat
diseases. In addition more effective welfare tools should be
developed to assist the elderly in being independent and
participating in society, as well as to reduce the burden on
care-givers, and working styles providing a better balance with
private life should be achieved by making it possible to
simultaneously work and raise children as well as allowing active
elderly people to contribute to society through further promotion
of telecommuting and lifelong learning utilizing IT (information
technology). Such efforts will be effective not only for
distributing the burden imposed by an aging society with fewer
children, but also for changing the trend of fewer children by
altering the balance between family and the workplace.
Cyborg technology
Research is progressing on cyborg technology, replacing some
of the functions of the body by applying neuro-engineering, which
is technology that makes use of brain information. Muscles are the
devices that drive the hands and legs, and operate according to
electric pulse signals that run through the nerves. If it were
possible to read these signals, and feed them to an external drive
device (a motor, etc. to produce motion instead of the muscles), it
might be possible to cause an external device to move using
biological signals. This concept is the origin of
neuro-engineering.
Even if you lose an arm in an accident, if you think "move
arm," the same signals are still transmitted from the brain to the
nerves that originally were involved in moving your arm. By reading
the electrical signals from those nerves and connecting them to the
controller for a robotic arm designed to move in response to those
signals, it is possible to create a robotic arm that can be moved
like your own arm, simply by thinking, without any other special
operations.
Furthermore, there is research being conducted on
replicating the sense of touch, so that by attaching touch sensors
to an artificial hand, the electrical signals from the sensors can
be converted and transmitted through the nervous system. By gaining
an understanding of the pattern of the signals that flow throughout
the nervous system, it is becoming possible to take signals from
external devices and send them as signals that the brain will
interpret as signals from an actual sense organ. There is already
development being done on artificial eyes and ears using this kind
of technology, with more than 60,000 people throughout the world
already using this kind of artificial ear.
Left: Autonomous daily-activity support robot that is
equipped with soft skin, sight, hearing, sense of smell and sense
of touch, and can perform tasks with a delicate touch.
Photo courtesy of RIKEN
Below: A therapeutic robot designed to help reduce stress for
elderly and caregivers
Photo courtesy of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology
