A woman wearing a Cyberdyne lumbar robotic suit, which is designed to help her walk, gets an assist from caregiver Asami Konishi. TSUKUBA, Japan -- In America and other aging societies around the world, it has become common for the elderly to be cared for by their graying children or older workers. That's largely because the younger labor force is shrinking, and few want to do such low-paying, back-aching work. Japan sees an answer in robots. At Minami Tsukuba nursing home near Tokyo, caregiver Asami Konishi wears a robotic device on her hips that cuts the stress on her back when she bends and lifts someone.

Yoshiyuki Sankai's Hybrid Assisted Limb (yes, that's a nod to the haywire computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey) is suit that gives its wearer superpowers: the ability to lift an extra 88 pounds or walk long distances without tiring. The catch–the suit's battery needs to be charged every five hours. Sankai's Cyberdyne plans to rent HAL suits for $1,000 a month. Irobot founders Colin Angle and Helen Greiner wanted to make robots that made money. The Roomba, their best-known offering, has done that, moving 2 million floor-cleaning units since 2002.

A Japanese robot-maker showed off suits that a wearer can control just by thinking, as it said it was linking up with an industrial city promoting innovation. Cyberdyne founder Yoshiyuki Sankai said he was allying with Kawasaki, a city south of Tokyo, to explore ways to expand real-life applications for his robo-suits, which are often used for physical therapy. "We want to make technology that actually helps people," Sankai, who is also a professor of engineering at the University of Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo, said. Cyberdyne, based in Tsukuba, makes power-assisted robotic suits, limbs and joints that can help the elderly and disabled to get around or can help industrial workers to lift heavy objects. The machines detect weak electrical pulses that run through the skin when the wearer's brain sends the message to the limb to move.