Care robots reimagined, beyond the hype
“ROBEAR” was 150 cm tall, weighed 140 kilograms, and had a cute bear face. Developed in 2015, the care robot had been designed for lifting nursing home residents, but never made it past the prototype phase. The more compact lifting robot “Hug” also failed tests in Japanese nursing homes. Both products were time-consuming, cumbersome to maneuver, and the lifting process was uncomfortable for many residents.
Questioning the roles of technology
ROBEAR and Hug are representative examples of unfulfilled expectations placed on robots and artificial intelligence against the backdrop of aging populations and the shortage of care workers. “The fact that they haven’t been successful in practice yet is largely due to the technology design's falling massively short of the complexity of caregiving activities,” says Laura Vogel, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Organization at TU Wien. “The notion that one can simply install a device that will solve problems is unrealistic.”
Vogel’s colleague Reinhard Kletter, a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Management Sciences at TU Wien, is a robotics expert and has seen quite a number of care robot prototypes come and go: “Technology often looks amazing on paper. But if it doesn’t meet the daily needs and values of care, it’s a waste of time and effort.” And Vogel emphasizes: “With many solutions, the effort required for implementation and maintenance is currently underestimated. That requires frequent software updates that simply shift costs and effort to the IT sphere instead of saving them altogether.”
User-centered research, on the other hand, seeks to focus product development on the needs of care facilities. Designs often start with a specific technology, with the objective of applying it to the care context.
Participation and Dialogue
“Caring Robots // Robots in Care” is a transdisciplinary project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF in which Laura Vogel, Reinhard Kletter, and other researchers from the fields of computer science, robotics, and social sciences are taking a step back: “Together with care workers and care recipients, we defined what roles for robots and artificial intelligence are desirable and useful in the care context,” notes Kletter.
In order to understand the needs and challenges in care settings, Vogel and other social scientists interviewed caregivers and systematically observed their daily work routines. In addition, the project team organized a series of workshops with caregivers and residents in Caritas nursing homes. “The goal was to learn from one another. First, we presented the technical background of AI and robotics: how do robots ‘see’, how can one communicate with machines via language models, and what possibilities arise from that?” explains Kletter.
Finally, the researchers, together with the workshop participants, collected wishes and ideas for applications in the care context. Building on this basis, Kletter and his colleagues from the fields of computer science, electrical engineering and robotics are currently developing several prototypes.
Robots in Care
A research project at TU Wien is developing user-centered technologies for the care sector. The goal is to create technologies suitable for everyday use that make care operations easier—rather than big robotic projects, many of which prove impractical.
Language models instead of robots?
“We found that for many desired instances of use one doesn’t really need a robot with a physical body,” Kletter concludes. Caregivers are particularly hoping for support with documentation duties. Kletter has therefore developed AI-powered assistance software that is currently being tested and continuously improved. The idea: caregivers wear a small clip-on microphone that records conversations during care activities. “This is important because even small talk can contain care-related information,” says the researcher.
By means of speech recognition and large language models, care-relevant information is subsequently extracted and used to generate a structured report that can be used for care documentation. In addition, the researchers are testing another prototype (“Calls of Care,” see graphic) to see how language models can be usefully applied to facilitate conversation and biographical work, particularly for people with dementia.
Value-oriented technology
It is not enough for care technology to be functional. It must also be aligned with the ethics of care. In his doctoral thesis, Reinhard Kletter focused on the issue of privacy, to which residents and caregivers attach special importance: “Privacy must be considered from the very beginning of the design process. This is not just about data protection, but also about ensuring that a tool does not transform the interaction between caregiver and resident.” In the case of the AI documentation tool, only the transcript containing care-relevant information is retained, whilst the audio file is deleted immediately. The mere possibility that the technology could also be used for surveillance is a problem and requires clear communication and transparency.
Care quality first, hype second
The privacy aspect shows how new technology can change the social fabric in a work context, says Laura Vogel. She is currently focusing particularly on the effects on the professional self-image of nursing staff: “Technology should create added value, i.e. make work easier or strengthen skills, rather than downgrade nurses. That might be the case, for instance, if they have to clear away a machine after use and thus ultimately have less time to spend on care.” Kletter points out that the autonomy and participation of the caregiver must be preserved in all care processes. Therefore he wants to incorporate “human-in-the-loop” steps into AI-supported care documentation.
Many of the wishes expressed in the discussions – such as for a robot that can do cooking together with residents – reflect a fundamental difficulty, according to Vogel: “Care should be time-efficient, but ideally it should also be holistic and person-centered. I don’t think these conflicting objectives will be resolved if machines break the work down into many small, automated steps.” When considering what care should look like in the future, we as a society should critically examine the advantages and disadvantages of AI and robotics – without succumbing to the hype and blind faith in technology.
About the Project
Caring Robots // Robotic Care (2022–2027) explores the role of robotics and AI in the context of care, focusing on the needs and perspectives of those involved in daily nursing care. This collaborative research brings together experts from computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, and the social sciences. The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in the context of the “Connecting Minds” funding stream, which supports transdisciplinary research. Participants include TU Wien, IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria in Linz, Caritas Vienna, and the Vienna Technical Museum.
About the researchers
Reinhard Kletter is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Management Sciences at TU Wien, with a background in industrial engineering and mechanical engineering. As part of the “Caring Robots // Robotic Care” project led by Sabine Theresia Köszegi, he helped design participatory design workshops and subsequently, together with caregivers and care recipients, developed the technical components for a prototype of AI-supported documentation. His current research focuses on the impact of robotics and AI on privacy.
Laura Vogel is a doctoral candidate and university assistant in the Department of Ergonomics and Organization at TU Wien. In her dissertation, she examines the potential and desirable roles of technology in caregiving from a gender-sensitive and socio-material perspective. In the project “Caregiving Robots // Robots in Care,” she contributed to the design and practical implementation of participatory methods. Her goal is to highlight the potential opportunities and risks of robotic technologies for care work from the perspective of those affected.
Publications
- Privacy at the Core: Toward Automated Detection of Privacy-Sensitive Content in an LLM-Based Care Documentation Support System, in: Intelligent Human Systems Integration (IHSI) 2026
- Co-Design and Creation of a Documentation Support System for Care Workers with Large Language Models, March 2026, Preprint
- Co-design of Robotic Technology with Care Home Residents and Care Workers, 2024
- Privacy Agents: Utilizing Large Language Models to Safeguard Contextual Integrity in Elderly Care, HRI 2024
