June 23, 2025: More people are living longer. And most want to live independently as they age, in their own home. That hope frequently runs into challenges. Loneliness impacts the well-being of older people. Physical limitations make it harder to do chores and socialize outside the home. Memory issues can lead to missed appointments and failure to take needed medications.
Today, many of these challenges are met with the help of part-time home health aides. But the number of seniors continues to grow. In 2020 there were more people over 60 years-old than there were children under the age of five, according to the World Health Organization. By 2050, the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years old will nearly double what it was in 2015, from 12% to 22%.
IEEE Senior Member Ralf Ma explained that a growing senior population means as they retire, there’s a greater need to care for them, but a smaller workforce: “An aging population is one of the major challenges that humanity faces,” he said. “Artificial intelligence improves social productivity and fundamentally solves the problem of a decreasing labor force. Future household robots can also solve the problem of elderly care in their later years.”
The idea of robots for elder care has been discussed for years. IEEE Spectrum, for example, showed how a semi-autonomous robotic table could help older people maintain independence by simply carrying things for them.
Adding AI to Robotics
As artificial intelligence has advanced, there is increasing interest in using it to interface with robots. Because of advances in natural language processing, people regularly talk to smartphones and electronic devices that can now respond using generative AI. Shouldn’t robots be able to do the same thing?
Other advances might make it easier for robots to recognize objects in their environment or move within it.
“In the future, robots might remind them to take medicine, help with daily tasks and keep them company. They also notice emergencies and call for help when needed, making life safer and easier for seniors,” said IEEE Senior Member Márcio Teixeira.
Robots might also be able to receive data from sensors worn by the people they care for.
“Caregiving robots will also be able to monitor health using sensors and track vital changes to provide emergency services in real time when a problem has been identified,” said IEEE Graduate Student Member Haonan Guo.
A Cure for Loneliness?
One hope is that robots can have in-depth conversations with the people they care for, thus alleviating some of the loneliness that comes with living alone.
And the idea of talking to robots isn’t as strange as one might think. The first ever chatbot, called Eliza, was built with 200 lines of code close to 60 years ago, and it was designed to simulate the experience of going to a therapist.
The program was effective enough. Its designer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, was often concerned because “during the brief interactions with Eliza, many users began forming emotional attachments to the algorithm. They would open up to the machine and confess problems they were facing in their lives and relationships.”
The evolution of chatbots has progressed significantly, and there are already several devices on the market that use generative AI to serve as conversational chatbots or emotional support robots.
But so far, robotics isn’t advanced enough to have an all-in-one general purpose robot that can help with chores. Once there is, however, it’s only a matter of time before the robot is also given conversational capabilities.
