Japanese pandemic technology

For decades Japan has been a world leader in technology and electronics, something that is proving valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan explores technology to improve interpersonal communication at a time when we are asked to be at a distance from each other.

The city of Fujieda, prosperous and vital, offers a high quality of life to its 140 thousand inhabitants. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, many of its elderly residents, who live alone in their residences, cannot receive visits from their family and friends.

Something that increases the concern that their mental health will be affected. So the municipality can rent them an unusual companion, named Papero.

Papero

Many residents when they wake up in the morning and have Papero close to them, it allows them to speak naturally. Which gives them the impression that they start the morning with a conversation and that allows them to feel less bad.

Thanks to the artificial intelligence-based voice recognition function, this child-sized robot helps senior citizens speak and converse.

It also allows them to stay in touch with their loved ones by exchanging text messages and photos. It can be used to take care of health by identifying changes in activity patterns, Fujieda is a pioneer in piloting this plan.

Papero can take photos of relatives who live far away. On one occasion he sent a photo of a grandmother who fainted to her family. So they called her immediately and found that she had a fracture and couldn't move.

Through Papero, they learned that there was an emergency and that they should give him medical assistance.

For the makers of Papero, the Japanese electronics and information technology company NEC, robots like Papero can paradoxically make humans better connect.

Papero's developer, Matsuda Tsuguhiro, started designing Papero because his mother lived far away and was looking for a way to take care of her. Living alone is very sad, so people want someone to talk to.

People use the chat feature an average of 15 times a day and no more than 50 times. This shows that innovation tends to accelerate in times of crisis.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Japanese company was testing translation robots to help tourists at airports, but the project was halted.

Smart masks

With most of the world wearing Coronavirus masks, the company thought it could use the same opportunity to take advantage of the same software it had developed to create a smart facemask.

Robotics says its mask is the first to connect to the internet via Bluetooth. As a robotics company, they thought about what they could do and set about creating a mask that could connect to a smartphone.

The idea was that the smart mask could maintain social distance, that it could digitize voices or that it could translate, so they decided to develop it.

Together with an application on a device, the smart mask can translate into several languages thanks to its built-in microphone, amplify the voice of the spokesperson or transcribe a text.

Humans are social beings, technology cannot replace real interactions. However, when we cannot meet face to face, or need to distance ourselves from others for our own sake, it can certainly help us to improve communication between ourselves.