Paro the Robotic Seal Inventor Visits Royal Freemasons

Mr Shibata, the inventor of Paro the robotic seal paid a visit to Royal Freemasons Coppin Centre aged care home to personally reinforce how technology can play an important role in delivering a better quality of life for people living in aged care.

Invented by Mr Takanori Shibata, a visiting Professor of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a visiting Fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this robotic seal was specifically developed as a therapeutic device to assist patients suffering from dementia and has been successfully used worldwide to provide calming and engagement for aged care residents.

Mr Shibata has been recognised around the world for his development and is recorded in the Guinness Book of world records as the finest device ever developed for this work.

Research has found that this scientific tool has been extremely beneficial for dementia residents who have known behaviours such as agitation, wandering and aggression and who are resistive to standard intervention practices.

With that research in mind, The Paro seal was the focus of Royal Freemasons 2015 Appeal.

Aya and Keith Thornton were invited by the Royal Freemasons to assist with this innovative Appeal and they kindly gave their support to help purchase an initial eight Therapeutic Robot Seals for dementia aged care residents. 

The robot reacts to the attention given by a patient as if it was a child and has been shown to have positive therapeutic effects on the well-being of the patient.

The initial rollout of the Paro seals has commenced and a trial will continually monitor the results in order to instigate further rollouts to other residents to help improve their quality of life. 

Click here to find out more about Royal Freemasons aged care services.

From Bottom Left: Dementia resident, Marcos and Mr Keith Thornton
From Top Left: Yuji Miyoshi, General Manager Kowa Australia (PARO distributor), Christina Chia, Executive Officer Royal Freemasons, Professor Takanori Shibata, inventor of PARO