"Unlike the United States or Europe, Japan is reluctant to allow in cheap foreign labourers," said Takashi Gomi, president of Canada-based Applied AI Systems, whose company has developed a prototype of an "intelligent" wheelchair that can move around on its own and sense obstacles to avoid them.

"I don't think this will change easily in the next 20 to 30 years, so robots are about the only solution," said Gomi, a Canadian researcher born in Japan.

A researcher at Japan's University of Tsukuba, Sankai has developed a robotic suit designed to make it easier for elderly people with weak muscles to move around or for care-givers to lift them.

The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armour. It straps onto a person's arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs.

When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person's motions.

Sankai says the suit, dubbed "Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) 5", can let a person, who can barely do an 80kg leg press, handle 180kg.

"The big goal is to expand or strengthen the physical capability of humans," said Sankai, who set up a venture firm last year to market the robot suit and plans to start leasing HAL-5 to the elderly and physically disabled in Japan this year.

Robot gurus at Tohoku University and Nomura Unison Co. Ltd, an industrial machinery maker, say the key is to equip robots with the ability to detect intent or action.

That's what they had in mind when developing a "Partner Ballroom Dance Robot" that can dance a waltz.

The 1.65 metre, 100kg robot looks like a woman in a dress and can execute five types of dance steps to match the moves of a human dance partner.

It accomplishes this with a sensor that detects the force being applied to it by the human dancer and gauging how the person wants to dance based on such signals.