BEIJING – In a care facility in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, a waist-high white robot glides quietly between rooms. Its digital face lights up in a cheerful greeting as it makes its rounds. It reminds caregivers to reposition bedridden residents, prompts medication schedules, and tracks basic vital indicators, notifying medical staff if it detects unusual changes in heart rate or breathing.
It may look futuristic, but the problem it addresses is deeply human, and increasingly urgent.
From Asia to Europe and North America, aging societies are confronting the same reality: as demand for elder care grows and caregiver shortages intensify, governments and health systems are exploring ways to ensure older adults receive adequate care.
In China, the scale of the challenge is also striking. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the population aged 60 and older reached 320 million by the end of last year, roughly a quarter of the people in this age group. And the number of older adults with severe physical disabilities continues to rise.
Yet the number of professional caregivers is not keeping pace. Currently, China faces a shortage of more than 5.5 million professional caregivers, according to Guangming Daily. With about 90% of older adults preferring to age at home, families often shoulder major responsibility.
Fully Autonomous Humanoid Robots
It is against this backdrop that the fast-developing service robots are gaining attention, attracting both public interest and growing industry investment.
Fully autonomous humanoid robots capable of cooking, cleaning, and providing comprehensive elder care are still a long way off. But in more targeted ways, technology is already making a measurable difference.
Mobility support is one example. Exoskeleton robots are being introduced in some care facilities and community rehabilitation centers, helping older adults walk again. These wearable devices support hips and knees, adapting to each wearer’s movement patterns.
Wu Liying, a woman in her 70s from Hangzhou, used one in a rehabilitation session recently. With its assistance, she was able to walk from the first to the third floor without resting. “I felt the equipment lifted my legs and made walking much easier,” she said.
Other innovations focus on relieving caregivers from physically demanding tasks. Cleaning bedridden older adults after a bowel movement is a time-consuming and exhausting daily task.
China’s Nursing Robots Step in to Help
Now, nursing robots are stepping in to help. Each features an attachment that both looks and works like a traditional dipper. Connected to a main cleaning unit on the floor, it uses built-in sensors to detect waste, clean the area, and air-dry the body automatically.
A caregiver at a care facility in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province said, “Before, I spent more than half a day cleaning up waste and changing bedding. Now, with the help of nursing robots, I have more time to talk with my older residents.”
That shift, from physical strain to human interaction, is precisely where many experts see the real value.
Despite the promise, widespread use of service robots in private homes remains limited. Real-world conditions pose practical challenges: small apartments, high costs, and ease of operation.
These hurdles, experts say, will take time to overcome. Wang Sumei, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences specializing in technological innovation, noted that the priority is improving technical expertise to enhance the practicality of care robots in real home settings. Collecting data is crucial for breakthroughs, but it is costly, and real-home experiments remain limited.
Building on this, reducing costs will be essential to expand wider adoption. For example, exoskeleton robots used for rehabilitation can cost around $22,000, beyond the reach of most households.
Social Stability in Aging Societies
Looking further ahead, social questions also emerge. How might emotional attachment to machines affect older adults? Could heavy reliance on robotics alter long-standing family caregiving traditions? These ethical considerations will require careful thought as the technology advances.
Industry experts emphasize that care robots are not intended to replace people. Instead, they aim to handle repetitive and heavy tasks: lifting, cleaning, and monitoring, so caregivers and adult children can have more time and energy to focus on personalized care, like rehabilitative treatments and meaningful conversation.
Beyond technology, broader policy support remains essential. Expanding community-based rehabilitation services, increasing public health insurance coverage, and ensuring equitable access to elder care, particularly in underserved regions, are all critical to social stability in aging societies.
In this larger ecosystem, service robots may play a bigger and more important role, complementing human care while addressing demographic challenges faced by aging societies globally.
2026 marks the opening of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan period, a new policy cycle in which elderly care remains a central priority. As demographic pressures intensify, technologies that support older adults are expected to receive stronger institutional backing, from research funding to pilot programs and public service integration.
Under China’s long-standing human-centered development approach, innovation is not viewed as an end in itself, but as a means to enhance well-being. In that context, caring robots are less about futuristic display and more about building a society that adapts thoughtfully to the realities of aging.
By Chen Ziqi
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