Meet the Robots Bringing Comfort, Strength, and Smiles to Care Homes

In a quiet lab in northwest London, three black metal hands rest on an engineer’s workbench. Each one slowly flexes — four fingers and a thumb opening and closing with unsettling precision. No claws. No pincers. Just eerily human-like motion.

“We’re not trying to build Terminator,” Rich Walker, director of Shadow Robot, the firm behind them, told the BBC.

Walker, long-haired and bespectacled, could easily be mistaken for a philosopher rather than a roboticist. But what he’s building isn’t science fiction — it’s a vision of a near future where robots might help us with the most human task of all: caring for one another.

“We set out to build the robot that helps you, that makes your life better — your general-purpose servant that can do anything around the home, do all the housework,” he says.

The company’s deeper mission, though, is to confront one of Britain’s most urgent challenges: the crisis in elder care.

Last year, a report by Skills for Care found more than 131,000 vacancies for adult care workers in England. Another study by Age UK showed around two million people over 65 living with unmet care needs. By 2050, one in four Britons will be over 65 — a demographic shift that could stretch the care system beyond recognition.

The previous government tried to get ahead of that reality, investing £34 million to develop robots that could assist in caregiving. Back in 2019, officials even predicted that within 20 years, “autonomous systems like robots will become a normal part of our lives.”

The question, of course, is whether anyone actually wants that — or trusts it.

Japan’s Cautionary Tale

If you want to glimpse what that future might look like, head to Japan, where robots have already taken up residence in some care homes.

Ten years ago, Japan began subsidizing the development of robotic caregivers — part of a national experiment to compensate for an aging population and a shrinking workforce.

Dr. James Wright, an AI specialist and visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London, spent seven months inside a Japanese care home studying how those robots performed.

Three robots immediately caught his attention. First was HUG, a high-tech walking frame created by Fuji Corporation that helps caregivers lift people safely from their beds to wheelchairs or even to the toilet. 

Then there was Paro, a soft, seal-like robot designed to comfort dementia patients with its gentle movements and lifelike sounds. And finally, Pepper, a small humanoid robot with big expressive eyes, who cheerfully led residents through arm-stretching exercise routines that made everyone smile.

At first, Wright admits, he was optimistic.

“I was expecting that the robots would be easily adopted by care workers who were massively overstretched and extremely busy in their work,” he said. “What I found was, almost the opposite.”

The robots, it turned out, needed as much care as they gave. Staff spent hours cleaning and recharging them, troubleshooting bugs, and moving them out of residents’ way.

“After several weeks the care workers decided the robots were more trouble than they were worth,” Wright said.

Some of the problems bordered on tragicomic. One resident became too attached to Paro and was distressed when it wasn’t around. Pepper’s high-pitched voice was hard to hear — and its short stature made it difficult for residents to follow its exercise moves.

Still, developers insist they’ve learned from those early missteps. Fuji says HUG has been redesigned for more compact use. Paro’s creator, Takanori Shibata, points to clinical evidence of its “therapeutic effects.” And Pepper’s new owners have updated its software.

Bringing Robots Out of the Lab

Back in the U.K., researchers are determined not to let those early experiments define the field.

“We are trying to get these robots out of the labs into the real world,” said Professor Praminda Caleb-Solly of the University of Nottingham. She’s founded a network called Emergence to connect roboticists with businesses and older adults — to design care robots that people might actually want.

The answers she gets are as diverse as the people she asks. Some want voice-activated helpers. Others prefer cute designs that feel less threatening. But one response stands out:

“We don’t want to look after the robot — we want the robot to look after us.”

That demand for simplicity and self-sufficiency is shaping how companies approach care tech.

Caremark, a home-care provider in Cheltenham, has been testing a small voice-activated robot called Geni. One man with early-onset dementia loves asking it to play Glenn Miller songs. But not everyone is sold.

“Reactions have been like Marmite,” admits Michael Folkes, Caremark’s director. “Some people love Geni, and others… not so much. But we’re not trying to replace carers. We’re trying to build a future where carers have more time to care.”

The Quest for the Perfect Hand

Meanwhile, back in the Shadow Robot lab, Rich Walker gestures toward his latest creation — a hand capable of solving a Rubik’s Cube one-handed. It’s sleek, nimble, and fitted with a hundred sensors that mimic the dexterity and strength of a human hand.

“For the robot to be useful, it needs to have the same ability to interact with the world as a human does,” Walker says. “And for that it needs human-like dexterity.”

Still, the mechanical hand has a long way to go before it can manage delicate tasks like using scissors or picking up fragile objects.

“The way we use a pair of scissors is quite mind-blowing,” he says. “You’re using your sense of touch in subtle and precise ways. How do you tell a robot how to do that?”

His team is now part of the Robot Dexterity Programme, one of several initiatives funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) — a U.K. government body backing high-risk, high-reward scientific projects.

Project leader Professor Jenny Read says the team is studying animal movement to inspire robot design. “One of the very striking things about animal bodies is their grace and efficiency,” she says. “I think gracefulness really is a form of efficiency.”

Giving Robots Muscle — Literally

Another scientist, Guggi Kofod, a Danish engineer, is working on “artificial muscles” — soft materials that contract and expand when electricity runs through them, giving robots more lifelike strength and control.

His motivation is deeply personal.

“Several people near me died from dementia very recently,” Kofod says. “If we could build systems that help them live at least a decent level of life… that’s incredibly motivating for me.”

Kofod’s company, Pliantics, is collaborating with Shadow Robot to give its robotic hand more delicate control — the kind that can feel pressure and know when to stop squeezing.

The Human Cost

Despite all the optimism, some experts remain wary.

Dr. Wright fears that, if deployed recklessly, care robots could make conditions worse for human workers.

“The only way that economically you can make this work is to pay the care workers less and have much larger care homes,” he warns. “You’d have more robots taking care of people, with care workers being paid minimum wage to service the robots.”

Others see opportunity, not danger.

“It’s going to be a huge industry,” says Professor Gopal Ramchurn, an AI researcher at the University of Southampton and CEO of Responsible AI. “The demand for carers as our population ages will be huge.”

Ramchurn points to Elon Musk’s Optimus humanoid robot, which served drinks at a Tesla event last year, as evidence that humanoid robots are coming — whether we’re ready or not.

“We’re trying to anticipate that future,” he says, “before the big tech companies come in and deploy these things without asking us what we think.”

Because ready or not, the robots are coming. The question now isn’t whether they’ll be part of our care homes — but whether we’ll feel safe enough to let them in.

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