With gardening becoming increasingly popular, Japanese scientists have come up with a robot suit designed to help with tilling the soil. According to lead researcher Shigeki Toyama, a robotics professor at The Tokyo
University of Agriculture and Technology, the suit which is worn as an external skeleton, is the latest
technological advance designed to assist Japan's rapidly ageing farmers. He have been working on this for about 10 years because few young
people want careers in agriculture now and older farmers need help to do
their work.
The suit is fitted with motors at the key joints - the lower back,
knees, elbows and shoulders - that work in tandem with the wearer and
provide additional strength. It is designed for a range of activities that farmers are required to
do, such as carrying heavy bags of potatoes, pulling 'daikon' (Japanese
radishes) from the ground, or pruning branches. Professor Toyama's robotic suit weights an unwieldy 25
kg, but he is aiming to reduce that by half and have it on the market
within two years. Early versions are likely to cost as much as Y1
million (£7,370), but he hopes that mass production will reduce that to
around Y300,000 (£2,210) per unit.
Japan's agricultural sector is in crisis as young people abandon the
countryside for jobs in major cities. Nearly half of the nation's
agricultural workers are aged over 60 and the amount of cultivated land
here is shrinking. Becoming increasingly reliant on imported food
has caused consternation in government circles here and efforts are
under way to encourage more people to take up farming. At the same time,
technology is being pressed into service to increase yields and
efficiency.
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