Global Center for the Design and Development of Eldercare Robots
ElderBot City: New Frontier for Eldercare Robotics
“I think eldercare is the next great challenge, All the demographic trends point to a shortage of caregivers, a surplus of elderly persons, and a strong desire for elderly persons to age in place. We see it as an unexplored frontier in America, but also an intrinsically interesting challenge for robotics.”
—Roberto Bolli, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Directionless tech
The absence of any breakthrough technology in assistive robots for eldercare is getting to be alarming for many countries with rapidly aging populations. Most of the industrialized nations are aging exponentially, with China alone facing 300 million of its citizens being sixty-five or over by 2050.
Tabletop companion robots like EliQ are admirably filling a niche for chat and being socially helpful, but the crying need for the elderly is physical assistance in doing things and getting on with daily life. Namely, assistive eldercare robots.
Maybe something extraordinary is in order to jump-start a new beginning.
From time to time, humanity has seen a need to create a Bletchley Park or a Rad Lab or even a CERN large hadron community, when it was decided that converging many of our best and brightest minds together under one roof might have a chance of creating a technical breakthrough thought unavailable by any other means.
Could revolutionary robots in assistive eldercare spring from such a convergence of tech engineering talent?
With humanity seemingly inept, except in a few rare instances, at designing and developing practical assistive robots for the elderly, maybe it’s time once again to congregate some of the best and brightest together and task them to come up with the needed breakthroughs.
ElderBot City: Putting heads together
Think for a moment about an entire small city, built expressly for the singular project of designing and developing a new breed of service robot. Maybe the good burghers of Pittsburgh, America’s unofficial robot capital, might feel inclined to advocate for the building of an ElderBot City, where engineering and design talent from around the world would live and work in residence dedicated to revolutionary new types of assistive eldercare robots.
Globally, the most-affected nations would financially support the city in proportion to their need. Any and all resulting success would be shared in the same proportion as to profits, jobs, and intellectual property derived from the success at ElderBot City.
With East Asia the most in need of assistive robot eldercare, maybe ElderBot City might be a better situated in Beijing or Shanghai. Notably, China, in a world’s first, has officially integrated robotics into eldercare services nationwide, with a focus on accelerating the development of humanoid robots and intelligent systems while building a nationwide network of eldercare services by 2029.
China’s shift towards high-tech caregiving reflects a recognition that traditional eldercare services alone cannot meet the needs of a rapidly aging population (China will have 300 million people over sixty-five years old by 2050).
Additionally, China has already produced elderly assistive robots that are highly practical and stylish. For example, Tencent’s Robotics X Lab is out with Xiao Wu (meaning Five, in English), a much-needed breakthrough in eldercare robotics. And more are on the way.
The United States has no time to wait either. With a population older than it has ever been, America’s median age is 38.9, which is nearly a decade older than it was in 1980. And the number of adults older than 65 is expected to balloon from 58 million to 82 million by 2050. The challenge of caring for the elderly, amid shortages in care workers, rising health care costs, and evolving family structures, is an increasingly urgent societal issue. ElderBot City, even without a national strategy similar to China’s, would be an extraordinary step in the right direction.
Floundering eldercare tech
Signs that America’s elder tech robot industry is floundering are everywhere. Most recent warning came from The Atlantic’s Whatever Happened to All Those Care Robots? “So far,” said the article, “companion robots haven’t lived up to the hype—and might even exacerbate the problems they’re meant to solve. Or, Robot Eldercare Is Not Going According to Plan. Or, a laundry list of to-dos not done: Enablers and Barriers to the Implementation of Socially Assistive Humanoid Robots in Health and Social Care: A Systematic Review. As well as this from Japan: Research from Japan shows that a better understanding of the elderly, how they live, where they live, and how best to help them, may need a total rethink
“Research from old-age homes showed that “care robots themselves required care: they had to be moved around, maintained, cleaned, booted up, operated, repeatedly explained to residents, constantly monitored during use, and stored away afterward. Indeed, a growing body of evidence from other studies is finding that robots tend to end up creating more work for caregivers.”
And, of course, there is always the incessant drum beat of the exponentially rising population numbers. This from the U.N: “Elderly to make up 22% of world population by 2050. The percentage of the global elderly population is expected to more than double to 1.5 billion for those older than 65 by 2050. People aged 60 and older now make up 12.3% of the global population.
Makes building an ElderBot City seem like a real-world necessity.
ElderBot City could well become a big money maker. The eldercare assistive robots market is anticipated to secure a CAGR of 12.4% during the forecast period 2023-2033. As of 2023, the market held a valuation of $2.5 billion, with projections indicating a potential increase to $8 billion by 2033.
See related: When the Robot Burns the Toast
A Review & Commentary on Toyota Research Institute’s in-home robots, as seen through TRI’s Robotics Virtual Open House
Assistive eldercare robots are hard problems
“Turns out, eldercare assistive robots are super difficult to design and build, which is probably one mega reason why no one seems to want to take on the project, and those that do, fall way short of success.” And maybe more reason for a convergence of the best and brightest to design and build them.
The development and deployment of assistive eldercare robots has encountered significant obstacles that have limited their widespread adoption and effectiveness, despite the urgent need created by global demographic shifts toward aging populations.
Current evidence reveals that technical limitations, capability constraints, negative preconceptions, and fundamental design mismatches between robotic systems and care environments have created substantial barriers to successful implementation. The challenges are multifaceted, spanning technical performance issues, user acceptance problems, and inadequate understanding of the complex care environment where these robots must operate. However, emerging research suggests that addressing these barriers through iterative design processes, enhanced technical capabilities, improved user interfaces, and better understanding of age-related acceptance patterns could significantly improve outcomes.
The path forward requires sustained collaboration between robotics researchers, care professionals, and end users to develop solutions that are both technically robust and contextually appropriate for the diverse needs of older adults in care settings.
There’s room for everyone in ElderBot City. See you there.