Social Robots in Elder Care

The Turn Toward Emotional Machines in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

As a hyper-aging society, Japan has one of the highest global life expectancies and is undergoing a demographic transition that Western nations have yet to experience. The Japanese government is encouraging robotic solutions to a labor shortage in elder care, and Japanese authorities have adopted an agenda of introducing social robots to assist in elder care. However, Japanese society is increasingly experiencing the phenomenon of people becoming emotionally attached to anthropomorphic machines such as social robots, and the introduction of social robots into the realm of elder care can be perceived as contentious by elders, caregivers, and family members. By exploring human engagement with social robots within the care context, this paper argues that introducing emotional technologies into the care equation neither provides the same kind of experiences as human–human interactions nor is necessarily psychologically deceptive, but gives rise to new relationships and ways of interacting.