CHINA PHOTO SET ROBOTS IN A NURSING HOME

Robots at the City Social Welfare Center in Hangzhou

epa05918947 A picture made available on 21 April 2017 shows Seniors interact with an 'A-Tai' robot at the City Social Welfare Center in Hangzhou, China, 12 April 2017. Hangzhou City Social Welfare Center, in East China's Zhejiang province is not your average nursing home: in addition to employing 200 nurses, it has become an early adopter of robots who help care for the 1,300 seniors that live there. The 'A-Tai' robots with the round bodies, heads sprouting two antennae and whose name means 'iron' in Chinese. Standing at just 0.8 meters tall and with 15 kilograms weight, they help nurses remember individual medication schedules and send updates to them with the information which pills has to be taken by each seniors. The robots can be controlled by mobile phones app or with a touch screen. Seniors can use a screen on the body of the robot to make video calls with loved ones. When prompted, the robots can even sing popular traditional Chinese opera songs. The A-Tai robots can chat in simple sentences and respond to voice commands from seniors by nodding their heads or dancing and singing. The robots are the first model to be developed by Woosiyuan Telecom Technology Co Ltd., which plans to release a second version of robots with more advanced functions. But for some of seniors even mastering the simpler first version has been a slow process. Language is also an issue, because some seniors speak different dialects of Mandarin. For the seniors it is a good entertainment too, however, the presence of one another seemed more valuable as so far no one has created something better that just simple real human communication. EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY

☞ '박근혜 집 싸서 샀다'더니 전두환 장남 농장도 인수

☞ 20원이 앗아간 청년의 목숨, 누가 책임져야 하나

☞ 자전거 탄 농협강도…드론 띄운 경찰

☞ "여장하면 해방감" 엄마 치마 입고 여고 화장실에

☞ '역사 앞에 섰다'던 안종범…말 바꿔 '모르쇠'

▶연합뉴스 앱 지금 바로 다운받기~

<저작권자(c) 연합뉴스, 무단 전재-재배포 금지>