AN AI-powered android nurse shows its bot-side manner as it gets hands-on with a patient.
The test demonstrated how medical robots could be used to help the elderly with basic functions such as changing positions or their clothes.
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The 150kg, £50,000 mechanical helper called Airec was on show at Waseda University in Tokyo.
It could be helping care for Japan’s aging population by 2030.
Last month experts said robot housekeepers could be a reality within a decade.
The human-like machines will use artificial intelligence to learn how to clean, tidy and even prepare food.
The first models are expected to cost the same as a family car — from around £16,000 to £40,000.
Engineers at the world-leading Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe humanoid machines would make sense as “homes have been built and arranged around the human body”.
Computer scientist Prof Pulkit Agrawal said: “In terms of things to do, it could be checking doors are locked, fetching a newspaper, putting laundry in and out of the machine.
“It could be arranging things in your kitchen and your bedroom, putting things in a dishwasher — maybe even chopping vegetables.
We need these physical tasks done but don’t like to do them.
“My guess is this could be available in the next five to ten years.”
Teams at the US institute are already working on pressure-sensitive fingers so robots can “feel” the force they apply and not crush everything they grab.
They are also developing AI brains that adapt to different ways of doing chores in changing situations, like dishes left in different places or put in different cupboards.
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