Panasonic R&D 'House of the Future' To Open 64
Tomo Hiratsuka writes "On January 4 Panasonic opens its new R&D showcase in Tokyo, featuring the usual raft of environmentally friendly products and a take on how to make gadgets more usable for the graying societies of the future. Examples are thin on the ground at the minute but the company's Universal Design (UD) concept could be just the kind of simplification everybody's grandparents have been whining for over the holidays when faced with the space-age remotes on new-fangled DVD players and the like." Details can be found via CBS, and an official release.
Disturbing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Instead of baby-proofing the house.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Aged care is enormously expensive, especially in Japan. You can save a lot of money with better automation.
I remember a researcher who was building automated systems to help elderly people. The user interface was a major problem until he hit on the idea of reusing the telephone. When the house systems need to tell the occupants comething (time to take your medication?) the phone rings and a voice delivers the information.
Also of interest: Japan's humanoid robots (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of Japanese firms do this (Score:3, Interesting)
They also had the outragous concept cars and transport devices such as the i-unit [toyota.co.jp].