As boomers reach retirement age, we face issues related to workforce knowledge retention, financing longer retirements, and healthcare provision for aging populations. While these questions are important in North America, they are particularly acute in countries like Japan where older workers make up a disproportionate share of the workforce. Japan’s work in robotics is now being applied to assist the elderly. A robotic exo-suit called HAL is one example of this. Here’s the video:

Toyota has also done some interesting robotics work with wheelchairs – producing a balancing wheelchair that’s similar in concept to the Segway personal transporter.

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A bit gimicky to be sure. Yet it’s also interesting to see how tomorrow’s assistive devices are certain to have a lot more intelligence embedded in them. That will enable these devices to be a lot more portable, practical, and (hopefully) safer and more user-friendly.