Taking a closer look at the care market in Japan shows different concepts for home usage, health care provision and elderly care. Technologies for care assistance aim at reducing the burden on nursing staff and at improving the quality of care through transfer systems like the polar bear robot ROBEAR or a RoboBed. Aside from this, in the field of entertainment, robots can be used for playing (e.g. AIBO, RoboCup), for communication (e.g. NAO, Papero, KOBIAN-R) or for fostering creativity (e.g. Lego Mindstorms). This illustrates that the transition between care and entertainment can be smooth. Technolo-gies for medical purposes like rehabilitation and therapy are another very promising de-velopment field. Through the utilization of robots for therapy or rehabilitation by using, for example, the robot seal Paro or the robo-skeleton HAL, psychical and physical con-ditions can be improved. Also other technologies, such as Nintendo’s Wii (Watanabe
2013; Nishiwaki et al. 2012), that are not directly associated with robotics, seem to be very promising for care. However, the main problems for the wide expansion of robots are their high costs and battery limitations.
In the study and development of assistive robotic technology, Japan has already been doing research for many years. An example is the research of Prof. Toshimitsu Hamada and Prof. Mitsuru Naganuma, who analyze the effects and benefits of robot-assisted therapy. In their experiments, they use AIBO and Paro in nursing homes to examine their effect on the elderly (Hamada, Okubo, and Onari 2006; Hamada 2013). AIBO is a dog-like robot that is able to interact with its owner and can be programmed through a remote control. Paro is a seal-like robot that can communicate through sound and is used for therapy. On a similar basis as animal-assisted therapy, it seems that by using Paro, it can help relieve stress and discomfort in the elderly (Shibata 2006). One advantage of robots in the field of health care is that there is no problem with hygiene regulations and the running costs, compared to an animal therapy dog, are much lower.
Another Japanese robot that enjoys great media attention is the humanoid robot ROBEAR. Already ROBEAR’s predecessors RIMAN and RIBA were equipped with vis-ual, olfactory, auditory and tactile sensors (Mukai, Hirano, and Hosoe 2009) and were able to lift and carry people. RIBA was expected to be used in hospitals and nursing homes in the near future. The robot should have relieved the physical burden on nursing staff by moving people out of bed and into wheelchairs, and vice versa (Susumu Sato et al. 2012). The project was a collaboration between RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries, which together established the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research. The most noticeable difference to its predecessor is that its design was not inspired by a human, but by a polar bear.
In Japanese society, the idea of using robots within the field of elderly care seems to be highly fixed. From an economic perspective, the government and many companies have invested huge amounts of money into robotic research. From an everyday perspective, families are looking for ways to facilitate care for their aging relatives, which easily ex-plains the high expectations behind the development and the future fields of implemen-tations for care robots. There seems to be a positive association of technology that is creating a conducive environment for research and development of service and care robots in Japan. Within this context, to some extent robots can be construed as a con-nection between society and technology. Thereby, robot images within pop culture can lead to positive spin-off effects fostering consensus for robot development, but at the
same time might hinder their successful diffusion within society through their specific and advanced robot characters.
The current state of implementation outside the laboratory and diffusion within society, as well as research obstacles, are mostly ignored. Current research on Japanese robot-ics in Japan is either focused on discourse about culture (e.g. Wagner 2013; Robertson 2018), the technical parameter (e.g. Hirose 2013) or is limited to several projects (e.g.
Ishiguro’s Geminoid, Honda’s Asimo). Conversely, the Japanese government and re-sponsible ministries are rather vague and imprecise about details on how to realize the use of robot technology after the end of specific projects (see Chapter 3.3.2). A possible reason for this impreciseness could be a missing umbrella organization, comparable to for instance DARPA in the United States, to concentrate robot development in general.
Additionally, the end of a project period often marks the end of a robot, because the inventions are neither supervised nor monitored by the ministries. They are developed on the basis of a specific budget. and not on the basis of market demands, which might be crystallized in the mismatch between the four actors (government, engineers, care-giver and care recipient).
4 Methodological Framework
After understanding how innovation emerges and taking a closer look at the state of the art within robotics in Japan, it becomes clear that this study needs to rely on empirical data. Sismondo (2008, 23) gets to the heart of this necessity when he underlines that
“STS has shown […] that the solution to scientific and technical controversies rests on judgment by experts and judgments of the location of expertise rather than on any formal scientific method; science and technology are activities performed by humans, not ma-chines.” Against this background, the key element of this study is its empirical field re-search with the essential elements of empirical survey, data processing and analysis of data. Thereby, qualitative methods have their very own methodology. For this reason, I provide a general introduction into empirical research (see Chapter 4.1.). On this basis I work out research design with its structure (see Chapter 4.2.) and consequently develop an interview guideline (see Chapter 4.3), which includes some notes about the proce-dures of documentation. The interview guideline is attached in the appendix (see Appen-dix).
4.1 An Introduction into Empirical Research and the Selection of the Research