Japanese boffins at the prestigous Waseda University in Tokyo are working hard on their answer to the country’s rapidly aging population – the Twendy-One robot.
If you could have your own robot, what exactly would you do it for? Thankfully, Hollywood have filled in the blanks over the years, with heroic robots, clumsy robots, and even sex robots. The Japanese, however, have a far more pressing need to push ahead with symbiotic robot technology. One, because of the country’s aging population and two, because they’re Japanese.
Resembling a futuristic version of Short Circuit’s Johnny 5, the Twendy-One robot is designed to co-exist with humans and help out with nursing care and housekeeping for the ever-increasing eldery in Japan, a country not known for welcoming young, work-happy immigrants en masse.
Draped in a soft silicone skin, Twendy-One’s size and range of movement have been designed to replicate those of the average adult Japanese female. The robot measures 4.8 feet high and 2 feet wide.
The Twendy-One is the product of over 10 years of research by a team of researchers at the Waseda University (whose former students include six Japanese prime ministers) led by Dr Shigeki Sugano and over twenty private companies. Although the robot was first shown and demonstrated to the media in 2007, it is believed that the prototype will not become the finished article until 2015.
As you can see from the above demonstration, the Twendy-One is perfect for waking you up, lifting you out of bed and stealing ketchup from your fridge. The robot also appears ridiculously attentive when it comes to serving you drinks, though he does at least appear an extremely polite future butler.
If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can ever possibly go wrong when man attempts to build robots with cognitive thought, so we at JOE welcome the impending army of granny-helping Twendy-One’s with open arms.
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