Where Are the Elder Care Robots?

Robot & Frank
A scene from the movie "Robot & Frank."

In this guest post, Frank Tobe, a robotics analyst and publisher of The Robot Report, describes the technologies that are beginning to come to market to help the elderly live in their homes as long as possible.

In 2003, BusinessWeek interviewed Joseph Engelberger, the robotics pioneer who helped invent the first industrial robot. The article was entitled "How Robots Lost Their Way." Included in the story was a plea for money to build an eldercare robot that Engelberger thought could be built with then-current technologies, rented for $600 per month, operated at a cost of $1.25 per hour (compared to healthcare homeworkers who cost around $15 per hour) and developed at a cost of less than $700,000.

"The robot I'm working on will be two-armed, mobile, sensate, and articulate. It doesn't need to communicate a great deal to meet the needs of an 85-year-old. A human can ask: 'What's for lunch?' and the robot can respond with what it's able to make, or it can say: 'We're going to Johnny's,' or 'We just had lunch.' The voice recognition, behavioral systems, and artificial intelligence necessary to do this are ready. Most of the other technologies are, too. We don't need more navigation developmentgetting around an apartment is easier than moving through a hospital or on Mars, which robots do now. I could prove this functionality with the right partner for about $700,000 in 14 months or less."

It was an interesting proposition that should only get more interesting as the need for eldercare technology continues to increase. A few years after reading the BusinessWeek story, I tracked down Engelberger and phoned him.

We had several long conversations on the subject. He was a fun character to talk with, and I learned much in the process. But when we got to the part where I offered him the money he said he needed, he said, "No. I don't want your money. You're just an investor. I want money and partnerships with Panasonic, or Johnson & Johnson, Philips, or Siemens. They're in the business [healthcare products], have deep pockets, and have what I need for the robot to be successful: 1. design and manufacturing capability and 2. marketing experience in the health and eldercare marketplace."

That was in 2006. After all this time, Engelberger's eldercare vision is still a work in progress in research labs around the world. Products are emerging but very slowly and their solutions are not as broad-based and flexible as Joe imagined. Most are single-purposed and not for home use; and none are produced by the companies Engelberger mentioned. Panasonic has a line of robotic hospital devices; Johnson & Johnson discontinued their iBot stair-climbing wheelchair; Honda and Toyota showcase their walking research robots but other than robotic lawn mowers (Honda) they don't have any robots available for purchase.

Although recent European studies indicate that there is resistance to having elderly people minded by a robot, when given the choice of robotic care versus moving into a care facility, the resistance disappears. Another study from Georgia Tech showed that seniors preferred robotic help for household chores but not for personal needs (help getting dressed, bathing, etc.). This knowledge—and the spreading aging demographics of Japan, the United States, and other countries, is propelling research into home healthcare robots such as the one that appeared in the movie Robot & Frank earlier this year [pictured above]. The many stakeholders in robotic healthcare (family members and caregivers, healthcare providers, technology providers, aging or disabled individuals) all have similar goals: To provide independence, preserve dignity, empower those with special needs and provide peace of mind to all of the stakeholders.

Almost every major robotics university and research lab has some form of healthcare and quality of life research including home care robots: Georgia Tech has Cody; CMU has Herb; the Fraunhofer Institute has Care-O-Bot; Yale, USC, and MIT are running a NSF-funded Socially Assistive Robotics project; CIR and KAIST in Korea have their own robot projects. Nevertheless, the multi-purposed home healthcare robot Joe Engelberger envisioned back in 2003 still hasn't emerged—and specifically hasn't surfaced from any of the major home healthcare providers. Instead, present-day strategy appears to be to provide high-cost, high-need, single-purpose devices, spun off from university research, and marketed to hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, and wait until the technology develops further—or the political climate changes dramatically—before releasing Engelberger-style lower-cost, more capable, multi-purposed robots designed to be affordable and mass produced by the likes of Panasonic, Siemens, and Philips, for home use.

Why are there so few products released and why aren't there any fully capable devices like Engelberger described? I asked roboticist and blogger Travis Deyle, who was a member of the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, while working on his PhD. Hizook, Travis' blog, is a site that provides robotics news for academics and professionals:


The political climate in the US just isn't committed to robot healthcare solutionsat least not in juxtaposition to defense robots. Just imagine a DARPA robotics challenge for healthcare robots... Instead of BigDog, we could have Service Dogs; instead of Petman, we could have an in-home helper; instead of soldier extraction, we could have robotic nurses. Sure, DARPA's current challenges will ultimately help advance all of these, but why not tackle it head on? The saddest part... real healthcare robot advances (like Johnson & Johnson's old iBot wheelchair) are discontinued due to burdensome regulatory environments. Half of Mr. Engelberger's $700,000 could be eaten up by consumer safety certifications.



  • Convenient apps on PCs and tablets like GrandCare and QuietCare

  • Home robots like iRobot's vacuums and bathroom and kitchen floor cleaners


  • Fully-sensored and high-bandwidth houses (Cisco and Intel Labs)


  • Remote listening stations and dispatch centers

  • Combinations of all of these schemes





From left: InTouch Health's RP-VITA remote presence robot; Vgo in pediatric out-patient setting; new Double Robotics Double telepresence robot.

Remote presence robots, which didn't exist when Engelberger talked with BusinessWeek, have recently turned up in a variety of formsfrom simple Skype video chats on a mobility platform (Double Robotics) to serious medical assistance remote presence robots such as provided by the partnership between iRobot and InTouch Health , Giraffe, and VGo Communications' post-op pediatric at-home robots for communication with parents, nurses, doctors, and patients. Remote devices with the ability to carry things, similar to Hector, may be the next breakthrough followed by adding a single arm and a repertoire of tasks which that arm can perform and then, later dual arms and app stores full of programs the robot can follow.

Entrepreneurial activity in the eldercare space is very limited. Hoaloha Robotics, which is in the stealth phase of their development, may have the chops to bring a product to market. Tandy Trower, CEO and founder, who previously served as the founder and general manager of the Microsoft robotics group that created Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, outlined the design plans for his eldercare robot:

"Beginning with features and functions already commonly included in today’s personal computers and adding autonomous mobility and a few additional components with innovative applications and a human-centric interface design, the Hoaloha design will not only take existing PC experiences directly to the userwherever they arebut also open up new ways for individuals to stay connected, informed, and entertained while improving safety and access to remote services.



Finally, at the heart of the Hoaloha design is its 'human-centric' user interface. Designed to leverage and integrate natural interface modalities like speech, vision, and touch technologies, its interface is designed to be socially interactive and easy to use."


Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report. A former political consultant, he has energetically pursued a new career in researching and investing in robotics.




Contact us:  e.guizzo@ieee.org

Erico Guizzo
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