Comparing public funding approaches to the development and commercialization of care robots in the European Union and Japan

Abstract

Faced with ageing populations, escalating care needs, and growing shortages of care workers, Japanese and EU governments have pursued large, publicly-funded research projects to develop and commercialize care robots. Yet despite their global leadership in this field, Japan and the EU have rarely been compared directly in studies of care robotics. This paper explores similarities in their approaches to the public funding and planning of care robot development, commercialization, and implementation since the late 1990s, and what the differences reveal about their contrasting priorities in science, technology, and innovation policy, as well as differential treatment of care robotics as an industry and as a research domain. I conclude by arguing for the importance of studying such funding mechanisms and institutional actors to better understand their key role in shaping the emergent landscape of care robotics.