In Japan, coordination for the promotion of care robots and robot technologies touches the responsibility of several ministries. The following chapter will present an overview of the main bureaucratic efforts. METI as a central actor, being in charge of the coordination of efforts and subsidies in the manufacturing sector and, therefore, a vital part of the robotics industry, has an outstanding responsibility in the area of technology promotion and in driving the implementation of innovations. METI first attempt to support robotics focused on industrial robots, but recently a shift towards service robots, including care robotics and also disaster response and logistic systems, can be recognized. This alter- ation of the agenda is, among others, motivated by labor shortages caused by demo- graphic developments (METI 2013b; NEDO 2011).
METI launched several support projects up to 2009 under the term ‘Life Support Ro- bots’67. Since 2009, medical use of the promoted robots is highlighted and illustrated by
the new project name: Robotic Devices for Nursing Care68 (see also chapter 3.1).
Between the years 2009 and 2013 NEDO, a think tank and research organization asso- ciated with METI, was responsible for the Project for Practical Applications of Service Robots69. The aim of this project was to establish methods for the safety assessment of
new service robots (NEDO 2011). The outcome after the end of the project in 2013 was the Robot Safety Center70 (NEDO 2014), as well as the first internationally accepted
safety certification including robots, namely the ISO13482 (METI 17.02.2014).
In November 2012, METI and MHLW defined the ‘Priority Areas to which Robot Tech- nology is to be Introduced in Nursing Care of the Elderly’ 71 (see also chapter 3.1.2) in
cooperation, targeting better coordination of the promotion of robotic devices in the area of nursing care. Four areas and five items were, in the first step, declared as priority areas (lifting aids, mobility aids, toilets, and monitoring systems for people with dementia) for R&D support. Based on this specification, METI selected 31 in 2013 (METI 2014c) and in 2014 20 (METI 2014b) domestic companies as targets for subsidies, of which approximately two thirds can be categorized as SME. In February 2014, the areas were reviewed and extended to five by the inclusion of bathing aids. Additionally, eight robotic
67 In Japanese: seikatsu shien robotto 生活支援ロボット 68 In Japanese: robotto kaigo kiki ロボット介護機器
69 In Japanese: seikatsu shien robotto jitsuyō ka purojekuto 生活支援ロボット実用化プロジェクト 70 In Japanese: seikatsu shien robotto anzen jōhō sentā 生活支援ロボット安全情報センター
items within the five areas were designated as targets for further promotion, and the list of companies being awarded special funding was increased to 51, among which a budget of 1.82 billion Yen was shared (METI 26.05.2014) On top of that, both ministries prom- ised to provide an infrastructure for the testing and presentation of 1,500 robot case studies (METI 2014e).
The aim of the selection of prioritized items and companies of differing sizes and high economic and innovation potential in the area of robotics was to match development within the sector with the political agenda. Moreover, especially SME faced problems to access proper funding sources for risky technology R&D projects in Japan. Therefore, the subsidies were supposed to alleviate negative effects resulting from the difficult search for capital. The ministries hoped that the products stemming from these coordi- nated efforts could enable some elderly persons to sustain independent lives in their homes, lowering the pressure on the market for professional care provision and on fam- ilies providing home care for elderly generations. Furthermore, another integral part of the program was the exploration of concrete needs in relation to care robotics, enabling the successful exploitation of the markets' potential (METI 2013b).
Between the years 2012 and 2014, METI and NEDO additionally launched the Robotic Devices for Nursing Care Project72, which centered on two points - a Public Private Part-
nership for the development of robotic devices for nursing care and the establishment of a website as a platform for upcoming activities and information. The concept of the Public Private Partnership is the identification of demand in the sector, the reduction of (public and private) costs and the organization of further financial support. Moreover, the part- nership was supposed to help companies getting access to information from the admin- istrative side, utilizing data collected during conducted surveys for a deeper understand- ing of users’ needs (NEDO 2013, 13). The supplementary website ‘Care Robot Portal Site’73 was, furthermore, launched in August 2013 (AMED n.d.a).
Besides the continuation of the previously outlined initiatives, an additional budget for robot promotion related projects is provided in the form of subsidies by MHLW-related Association for Technical Aids since 2014 (ATA n.d.). The achievements of the subsidy program to the present day were summarized in the Practical Support for Welfare De- vices and Care Robot74 report (MHLW 2015b). Based on its content, it can be deduced
72 In Japanese: robotto kaigo kiki kaihatsu dōnyū sokushin jigyō ロボット介護機器開発・導入促進事業 73 In Japanese: kaigo robottopōtarusaito 介護ロボットポータルサイト
that MHLW is pursuing a similar support strategy like METI, but uses a different termi- nology. Whereas METI is promoting robot technology for care under the slogan of ‘Ro- botic Devices for Nursing Care’, MHLW is specifically referring to care robots. The effects of this duplication of efforts could either be of a negative (e.g. contradicting agendas, easy access to funding leading to the waste of public funds) or a positive nature (e.g. supplementation of each other spreading capital to more actors of need) and has to be evaluated.
In the context of the NRS, the CAO established the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) in April 2015 as a cross-ministerial institution for setting up a promotion system to lead results of basic research in the health and care sectors to commercialization (AMED 2015a). It seems that care robot development finally took shape thanks to the coordination efforts of the AMED.
In 2015, AMED adopted and continued the Robotic Devices for Nursing Care Project until 2017 (AMED 2015b). It is also interesting to look at the summary of the project budget between the years 2013 and 2016, which were published by METI. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, the annual budget volume was 25.5 billion yen, with a supplementary budget of 20.5 billion yen in 2013 and the objective of reaching a market size of 260 billion yen by 2030 (METI 2013a, 2014a, 2015). However, two points are noteworthy when the new budget for 2016 is regarded. Firstly, the annual budget decreased to 20 billion Yen and secondly, the budget has been limited to only two of the five priority areas, namely mo- bility and bathing aids (METI 2016). The practice of focusing support on selected areas, instead of channeling money into all five sectors, was newly established in 2014. Since then, different items were on the agenda each year; for example, in 2014, monitoring systems for nursing care homes and outdoor mobility aids were favored, whereas in 2015 monitoring systems for private homes, toileting aids, and wearable as well as non-wear- able transfer aids took precedence. This could have created dissatisfaction and might come as a shock for companies which decided to invest in the other three areas (AMED 2016).