GetRobo Blog English

PARO Project to authorize robot therapists

 Dr. Takanori Shibata, creator of PARO the therapeutic seal robot, was in San Francisco for a brief visit and GetRobo was able to get an update on the latest of  PARO.

 

 According to Dr. Shibata, Denmark has started to accredit “robot therapists” that are trained and able to use PARO for treating patients with dementia, developmental disabilities and such. This “PARO Project” started last December under the auspices of the Danish Technological Institute and already over 200 robot therapists have been authorized.

 

 Denmark’s spending on health care for patients that suffer dementia is about 100,000 dollars per year which is over twice what Japan spends, according to Dr. Shibata. Denmark believes that PARO can help with the care of these patients and has already announced that that it will purchase 1,000 PAROs for use in hospitals and care facilities. (Photo below: A robot therapist and an elderly woman at a care facility in Denmark. Photo provided by Dr. Shibata.)

 “Every country has its own ways of caring for people and also different ways of funding so it’s very important that we find a way to localize the product and services to fit each market” says Dr. Shibata. Besides Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway have also started a similar accreditation system. Plans in Germany and Spain are also underway.

 

 GetRobo feels that Dr. Shibata and the PARO Project are cultivating an important part of robotics which is to build a social infrastructure for robots to be smoothly integrated into society. There are a number of robots currently under development that are meant to be used in therapeutics and they should all eventually merit from this effort.

 

 PARO is now sold in the U.S. through PARO Robots U.S. It costs 6,000 dollars each. Trials are starting in the U.S. too and here is one recent report on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Pleo Creators Form New Venture

Many readers were sad to see Ugobe – maker of the Pleo dinosaur robot – go, but we have good news today. John Sosoka, former CTO of Ugobe, has started a new company. GetRobo got to talk with John on the phone about his new venture. Also he shared with us some very important experience and insights about why Ugobe failed and the future of the consumer robotics market.

 

(Photo:John with Pleo)

 

Q. What have you been working on lately?

 

A. I have co-founded 2 new companies with Tyler Wilson whom I worked with at my previous ventures including Ugobe. Tyler was the head of software development at Ugobe and the architect and driving force behind the Pleo Development Kit (PDK). By the way, the PDK has just been released as an alpha by Innvo Labs, a part of Jetta (that bought Ugobe’s intellectual property). Tyler and I are very happy that all the effort that we put into the PDK will now open up the creative possibilities for Pleo fans.

 

 So, one company we started is called Vita Robotica, which was formed when I got stopped being paid by Ugobe. While I was working without getting paid to try to deal with all the issues of Ugobe, I started working on a completely new implementation of a brain for robots that interact with humans. It’s something that I really had hoped to do at Ugobe, but never got to.

 

 I am fascinated in this life-in-robotics thing. And what I’m currently most interested in is in developing robots for special needs such as medical applications and companionship in institutions. For example, there are so many interesting things that have come up in the use of therapy dogs, and I think there are a lot of areas where medications don’t work well and where you can make use of robotics. Automated diagnostics at home is another area. Companion robots could help people keep track of their health everyday so that they can identify problems before they become real problems. There are not enough products that address those areas, and I think the market is pretty wide open.

 

 So Vita Robotica is a research company that builds the platform and tools that could be used to develop robots in this area.

Robot of the Year 2007 - 3

Three more special prizes for the 2007 Robot of the Year. Best component was the ultra-small AC servo actuator RSF-3B made by Harmonic Drive Systems, Inc. Fit for robot hands as in the video below.

Japan's machinery association chose the Automatic Robotic Blood Sample Courier System made by  Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. to award its prize. Two key features of this system is that the robots can work in groups without predesignated tracks.

Last but not least, an MR Image-Guided Surgical Robotic System developed by a group of academia and companies and led by Prof. Makoto Hashizume of the Dept. of Advanced Medical Initiatives at Kyushu University, received the jury's special award. What is so cool about this surgical robot is that it is compact enough to fit inside an MRI scanner and that all the electronic/mechanic parts needed to manipulate the robot and that would normally interfere with the MRI are OUTSIDE of the scanner. Thus for the first time, the robot enables doctors to conduct surgery utilizing MR images at real time. Something the popular da Vinci surgical system is not capable of doing.