Are Robots Key to Japan's Future?

Are robots key to Japan's New Economy?

By Reuters

April 2, 2002, 8:45 AM PT

By the end of the decade, the people who disarm bombs and search for survivors after a disaster may no longer need to put their lives on the line. A machine, possibly made in Japan, may be able to handle the dangerous stuff.

That is one goal of the Japanese government's $37.7 million Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP), which aims to market within a few years robots that can operate power shovels, assist construction workers and care for the elderly.

In the process, a new multibillion-dollar Japanese industry could be born.

"Just as automobiles were the biggest product of the 20th century, people might eventually look back and say that robots were the big product of the 21st century," said Hirohisa Hirukawa, a researcher for the government-affiliated National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

Hirukawa heads a group that helped to develop HRP-2, a silver and blue humanoid robot that stands 5 feet tall, weighs 128 pounds and looks a bit like a child wearing a spacesuit.

The robot, co-developed with Kawada Industries, Yaskawa Electric and Shimizu, is the latest in a series of humanoid robots unveiled by Japanese researchers in the last few years.

The government hopes their efforts will eventually enable robots to walk out of the factory--virtually their only domain at present--and into homes, offices, hospitals and any other place where humans toil.

It also wants to capitalize on the technological edge of Japan, the global leader in robot production and home to more than half of the world's industrial robots.

"We want to create a new market exploiting the technology Japan has accumulated, and to help strengthen the economy over the medium to long term," said Kenichiro Yoshida, deputy director of the Trade Ministry's industrial machinery division.

The Japan Robot Association, an industry body, estimates that the robot industry could grow to $22.61 billion by 2010. The figure has hovered around $3.8 billion for the past few years.

The group predicts the expansion will be led by robots that perform everyday tasks and believes that, while there are no such robots on the market now, they could be ringing up annual sales of $11.3 billion by 2010.

"We want robots to be able to function around humans and be useful in areas other than entertainment," Yoshida said.

For the industry to take off, however, technology must become far more advanced and, perhaps more critically, researchers will need to find useful roles that humanoid robots can play in society.

The HRP-2 appeared before the public for the first time at Robodex 2002, a four-day exhibition at the end of March that featured various robots developed by Japanese corporations and universities.

Visitors watched the blue-helmeted android help a human carry furniture about, and an older prototype drove a forklift.

"There is demand for robots that can be used in dangerous places and disaster areas," Hirukawa said, noting that workers could, for example, operate construction machinery from a safe distance via a remote-controlled HRP-2.

He hopes that perhaps 10 of the HRP-2 robots could be sold within five years of the state-run project ending in March 2003.

"Once we can sell 1,000 robots, I think the state's role will end and we will enter a natural mass-production spiral," Hirukawa said. "But I can't see yet how that will happen."

And Hirukawa says it will be a long time before humanoid robot technology is advanced enough to foster a major industry.

"I think the earliest we will see robots doing household chores will be by 2025, or 2050 at the latest," he said.

The Trade Ministry, however, wants to find a quicker way to build up a new robot industry and is beginning to examine options other than humanoid machines.

The trade ministry's Yoshida said a new project aimed at developing household robots would not focus on humanoid robots, and the ministry was considering whether to continue the humanoid robot project after March 2003.

"Robots don't have to be humanoid to be useful in homes," he said. "We want to make robots as quickly as possible that can be used in homes or for disaster areas."