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Ch08-I044963.fm Page 31 Tuesday, August 1, 2006 12:31 PM
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EXPECTED MAIN FEATURES AND BUSINESS MODEL OF
HEALTHCARE PARTNER ROBOT
BASED ON THE MARKET ANALYSIS

Akiyoshi Kabe

Department of Health Science and Social Welfare, School of Human Sciences, Waseda University
2-579-15 Mikajima, Tokorozawa, Saitama, 359-1192 JAPAN

ABSTRACT

The new role of "Mechatronics" in the 21 st century, is to develop the robots in new category,
supporting people directly. The concept of Healthcare Partner Robot is derived from the market
analysis in the working group to make business plan, and several contacts to potential users and related
officers of cooperating municipalities/institutes in a few countries. The configuration of Healthcare
Partner Robot system, and expected main functions, target range of potential users, an acceptable cost,
an example of business model with related development strategies are explained. The further
evaluation of this concept will be done continuously.

KEYWORDS

Communication system, Human behavior analysis, Human robot collaboration, Human-machine
interface, Mobile robot, Service robot, Supporting robot

1. INTRODUCTION

st
The new role of "Mechatronics" in the 21 century is the one of the main technology to support people
directly by intelligent machines and systems with sensor, information technology, network, and human
sciences. Many prototypes of robots for medical and welfare applications, have been developed. But
much less number of those robots are introduced as final product to the market due to technical
problem [1]. If we focus not only on the technical issues but also on the marketing issues, it should be
possible to find an appropriate application as final product for these prototypes of robots, as we found
many applications for industrial robots in the 20 th century. We propose to focus on the specific