A sensing unit, such as a camera, or the like, senses the conditions of articles and mobile existences, including humans, in a life space, such as a house of a household, or the like. An article management/operation server manages, on an article database, attribute information of the articles, which include operators, etc., according to the information from the sensing unit. The server receives a user's instruction input through a console unit and refers to the article database to convert this instruction to a control command, which is then transmitted to a life-support robot.