on 30-10-2007 15:39

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Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Starting a part-time job at 65 wasn't easy for Yasuo Fukamachi. It got harder when a yellow cylinder on wheels trundled past on his first day in a Tokyo apartment building and began vacuuming the floor.

Fukamachi, who wipes windows and railings for 800 yen ($6.90) an hour in the high rise, had stumbled across the winner of Japan's first Robot of the Year award. Developed by Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the machine is at the forefront of a government drive to offset a dwindling workforce with technology.

 ``I got scared after seeing the robot,'' Fukamachi said. ``I got this cleaning job because my family-owned company couldn't pay much, even to me. Now I think robots might overtake me.''

Japan, the first developed country to register more annual deaths than births, is promoting robots to help increase productivity by 50 percent in the next five years. Japanese service workers currently produce 30 percent less per hour than their U.S. counterparts, the government estimates.

``Japan faces a stark choice: raise productivity or see living standards fall,'' said Robert Feldman, chief economist in Tokyo at Morgan Stanley's Japanese unit. ``Robots could be a part of the solution.''

The machines aren't a panacea. Industries need to invest in information technology, consolidate through mergers and acquisitions, and better allocate their capital to become more productive, Feldman said.

Rodney Brooks, director of the computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he is always ``amazed'' by the number of workers in Japan's service industries during his regular visits.

Squid and Spoon

``At the department store when I buy something, there is someone I talk to, someone I pay, someone wrapping, a woman in the elevator pressing the button,'' said Brooks, author of ``Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us'' (Pantheon Books 2002). ``It's not very productive.''

Set up by Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry in 2006, the robot competition attracted 152 entries. Other contestants honored by the judges included a machine to catch squid and My Spoon, a feeding device for the elderly and disabled.

Sales of the cleaner encountered by Fukamachi, which can catch elevators by itself, doubled after it won the top prize, said Kazuyoshi Ishikawa, an assistant manager at Fuji Heavy.

The battery-powered RFS-1, as the machine is known, made its apartment building debut in June after successfully cleaning an airport and hospital, Ishikawa said. Tokyo-based Fuji Heavy has sold 45 of the units, which cost from 5 million yen to 6 million yen, and now is developing a robot to sort library books.

`Don't Cheat'

``Robots are sincere and don't cheat,'' said Hajime Aoyama, the cleaner's inventor, who spent five years and 400 million yen perfecting the model at Fuji Heavy.

When Aoyama first presented the RFS-1, some customers tore up his business card because the robot veered off course when the floor surface changed, he said. That shortcoming has been fixed.

``These robots are great,'' said Yuhachi Izawa, a manager at Sumisho Building Management Co., which deployed the first RFS-1 in a Tokyo office building. ``They save electricity, air conditioning and the cost of employing workers -- and we can make them work during the night.''

Fukamachi is keeping an eye on his workmate, which will last 10 years. For a 12-hour working day, plus maintenance and recharging, the machine will cost about 5 million yen less than Fukamachi would be paid during its mechanical lifetime.

Not all robots are so useful. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. mothballed Japan's first human-style robot, Wakamaru, after three months in 2005 because of poor sales, said Toshiaki Murata, a business development manager at the Tokyo-based company.

`Laughable'

The yellow machine with a head and arms cost 1.6 million yen and was marketed as a household companion for the elderly. It could recognize as many as 10 faces, pepper its limited conversation with weather forecasts and use some body language.

The elderly didn't respond. Most buyers were 30- to 40-year- old men with a passion for robots, Murata said, declining to reveal the number sold.

``Our technology seems too far from practical use,'' said Kyoji Fukao, director of economic research at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. ``The government's aim is laughable without any specific plans and actions to increase productivity.''

Iwa Takahashi rather fancies a mechanized companion. At 84, she still picks and sorts mandarins at a farm in Japan's west.

Takahashi's farm uses robotic sensor arms on conveyor belts to sort sweet mandarins from sour, helping cut her working hours at harvest time. The average farm worker in Japan is 63, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

``I want to have a robot that can always work together with me because working on my own is kind of lonely,'' Takahashi said. ``Still, I don't like the fact that people can eat only good mandarins. I want them to know there are sweet and bitter fruit.''

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Last update: 30-10-2007 15:45

Published in : Bot News, Personal Robotics

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