Toyota will make health care robots available in the market by 2013. The mechanical assistants would be capable of lifting disabled patients out of bed and helping them walk.

"Toyota endeavors to provide the freedom of mobility to all people.... We aim to support independent living for people incapacitated through sickness or injury, while also assisting in their return to health and reducing the physical burden on caregivers," Toyota said in a statement.

The devices are expected to address shortage of human health care workers and the rapidly ageing population in many western and industrialised nations. Toyota unveiled two gadgets in a press conference in Tokyo.

The first device, the Independent Walk Assist robot, is a computerised metallic leg brace to help with rehabilitation. Also known as an exoskeleton, the robot is similar to a gadget developed by University of California Berkeley researchers and used by a paralysed student to walk across the stage to receive his diploma.

To demonstrate the device, Fujita Health University Professor Eiichi Saitoh - whose right leg was paralysed by polio - wore the exoskeleton including a battery pack on his back. Mr Saitoh could bend his knee, rise from a chair and walk more naturally than when using a walking frame.

The second one, the Patient Transfer Assist robot, helps bring a bed-ridden patient to the toilet. It is expected to ease the physical burden on nurses in moving patients around. The robot uses a mobile platform, arms that could carry weight and has controls to life and move patients like they are carried by another person.

"Each robot incorporates the latest in advanced technologies developed by (Toyota), including high-speed, high-precision motor control technology, highly stable walking-control technology advanced through development of two-legged robots, and sensor technology that detects the user's posture as well as their grasping and holding strength," Toyota explained.

Toyota has no details yet on prices of the robots or how it would be distributed. Another Japanese carmaker, Honda, is also developing a similar leg device.

The Toyota launch came on the same week that Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists said at a robotics symposium in Cambridge that more robots and computers will be deployed in the workforce to replace people in mid-level jobs performing clerical and call centre tasks.

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