Do Androids dream of changing bedpans? Robots to the rescue for Japan's aging population.

• Author: Suderman, Peter

FOR JAPAN, what sounds like a blessing is in fact a dire national problem: Its people live a very, very long time.

With an average life expectancy of 85 for men and 87 for women, Japanese people are the longest lived in the world. Combine that with a low birth rate--just 1.41 children per woman--and you get a top-heavy country, with 22 percent of the population aged 6y or older.

Japan spends almost 30 percent of its annual budget on its social security program, the vast majority of which goes to medical care and pensions. But the budget is already overburdened; with a 227 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, Japan is also the most indebted country in the world.

One estimate by the Japanese government found that by 2060, the population will have dropped from 127 million down to 87 million--and that as much as 40 percent of the country could be seniors.

So who's going to take care of all those ojiisans and obassansl

Robots to the rescue! In 2009, the Japanese government set aside about $93 million for the "Home-use Robot Practical Application Project," intended to fund the development of robots for specific uses, such as carrying the elderly and infirm from one place to another.

In 2013, the government announced that it would spend more than $20 million a year subsidizing research into affordable robotics for use in musing homes. According to the Bangor Daily News, the program would focus on four types of robots: a monitoring system to track the location of dementia patients, a robot movement aide to help the elderly walk, an Iron Man-like robot suit to help human health care workers lift the elderly, and an ambulatory toilet robot that can go to people who have trouble moving around.

Nursing care robots already exist, but they're very expensive, costing upwards of $160,000 each. One of the goals of the program is to bring the price down to about $1,000.

Both of these efforts represent a shift of sorts for Japan's robotics industry, which has long focused on general-use humanoid robots, such as Honda's Asimo, a fully mobile robot that once played soccer (sort of) with President Obama. The problem with those robots is that, while they drive media interest, they end up being very expensive without being particularly productive. Japan's bottom line simply isn't helped much by a robot that can kick a ball at a foreign leader.

But inexpensive robots that perform useful tasks could be genuinely valuable--and profitable. Japan's Trade Ministry has estimated...