WHEN GILL PRATT sat down to discuss the job of running the Toyota Research Institute, the carmaker's new research division, his Japanese interviewers wrote one word on a piece of paper and asked him to talk about it. The word was dementia. That might seem a strange topic to put to one of the most respected figures in the world of robotics, a man who had previously run a competition to find artificially intelligent, semi-autonomous robots for the Pentagon. But, Mr Pratt says, the company's interest in ageing was a big reason for him to take the job. "The question for all of us", he says, "is, how can we use technology to make the quality of life better as people get older?"
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