The robot?s Chinese developers are on the final sprint toward its market launch, said a senior researcher on the robot project here on Saturday Apr 25)

“We are working on testing the precision functions and ways to reduce the cost in preparations for an anticipated market launch of the robot in two to three years,” said Li Ruifeng, a member of the project with the Harbin Institute of Technology in this capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.

He said the team hoped to reduce the cost to 30,000 to 50,000 yuan (US$4,000-7,000), which is more or less considered to be an affordable price range for most of China’s better-off families.

Li said that the robot, developed independently in China, has technology on par with those in western labs.

China embarked on the research of the robot in 2007, when it was listed as a national key project. It is backed by government funding, as the government has foreseen problems of an aging society.

China has the world’s largest elderly population with 159 million people over 60, accounting for 12 percent of its total population.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, more than 10 million caretakers and nurses are needed to attend the elderly population, as most of Chinese elderly prefer to live their retired lives at home

China is beginning to address the increasing number of its senior citizens.

?It?s an industry with a great market,? says Zhao Liangling, director of Sunshine, a facility for the aged.

The world?s third-largest economy is aging so rapidly that by 2050, there may be only two working-age people for every senior citizen, compared with 13 to one now.

That increases the urgency of the government?s pledge to expand the Chinese social safety net and make retirement benefits and health care accessible to as many of its 1.3 billion residents as possible. China?s graying also requires a cultural shift as the tradition of families caring for aging relatives at home becomes more difficult.

China?s elderly, about 12 percent of the population now, will reach 30 percent by 2050, according to Mr. James Smith, director of the Center for Chinese Aging Studies at RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, California, who has helped to develop surveys that track aging in 25 countries.

More than a fifth of the Japanese population is 65 or older, and that figure may rise to more than 40 percent by 2050, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo..

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged last month to expand urban and rural pension coverage.

Source : Konaxis