Early this month, another independently ?developed robot for ?disaster relief, rescue and dangerous operations” successfully completed a simulated rubble search and rescue maneuver in Beijing. Both projects were developed by the Shenyang Automation Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The automation institute has taken four years to develop two types of the helicopter robot.

The bigger model is 3 meters long, almost the size of a small car, and weighs 120 kg , with a payload of up to 40 kg. It can fly for 4 hours at a maximum cruising speed of 100 km per hour.

The smaller model weighs 40 kg and has a payload of 15 kg and flies at a maximum cruising speed of 70 km per hour.

Each robot model is equipped with a camera to catch aerial images, and search for or trace targets automatically, as it hangs in the air based on assigned coordinates and control programs, when wind gusts were below a velocity of force six (11 km per hour).

“They are fueled by petroleum and priced from 700,000 (102,000 U.S. dollars) to 2 million yuan,” said Wu Zhenwei, a researcher at the institute based in northeast China’s Liaoning Province.

“We do not have any marketing plan for the robot. But if there are orders, we can make small-scale production, like 20 to 30 units,” he said.

Wu said the institute had no corporate partners for large scale production.

The robot project was one of the national key research project in 2006 because of its prospects for use in collecting information or carrying cargoes in harsh conditions such as earthquakes or poison gas leaks. It can also be used for spraying pesticides.

The institute?s latest project before the robot helicopter was another robot for use during searches in the rubbles during search and rescue and dangerous operations which successfully completed the simulated test in Beijing

The ?disaster robot? saves China from the difficulties that many countries face in quickly obtaining detailed disaster information after a major earthquake.

This “Robot” is a key project in the National High-tech R&D Program (863 Program), and was jointly undertaken by the State Key Laboratory of Robotics of Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Earthquake

The simulation maneuver test was performed at the National Earthquake Rescue Emergency Training Base on May 12.

Source : Konaxis

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