This robot is a hybrid of human and machine. It aims to assist nursing staff in retirement homes. Can it do this?

Martha Keller sits on a chair in her room at the retirement center. The room has large windows, and Keller overlooks Lake Zurich. On the side table is a herd of porcelain elephants, and on the nightstand is a photo of a black cat. "He belongs to my son," she says. She says this not to a visitor, but to a robot.

It stands next to her and looks down at her. It's as tall as a human, "wears" a black skirt and sleeves made of beige wool. Its arms are made of plastic mesh; when squeezed together, they give way. Instead of hands, the robot has pointed grippers, wheels instead of feet, and a screen instead of a face. The face of the person controlling the robot can be projected onto it in real time – remotely, from a distance, via a virtual reality headset.

Keller instructs the robot to bring her the frame with the cat photo. The robot confirms, turns around, moves toward the bed, and grabs the picture with its gripper arm. It brings it to Martha Keller. She looks up at it, smiles, and thanks it.

"I once saw something about a robot on a TV show. A small one, next to a coffee machine," says Keller. But it couldn't walk. She'd never seen anything like "this one" before.

Martha Keller talks about the robot as if it were a human.

And indeed, there is a human behind this robot, controlling it, speaking through it. The company that developed the robot, Devanthro, uses this as a selling point – the human remains "in the loop." The fusion of human and machine becomes a legitimation.

And the problem the company wants to solve is a real one: Our society is aging, and at the same time, fewer and fewer people want to work in care. Robots could be a solution, some say. But can we in good conscience allow robots to care for and look after elderly people?

Martha Keller is meeting the robot for the third time. But she communicates with it as if she sees it every day. Soon, it will be part of the family, she says.

Keller is 88 years old. She used to work as a swimming instructor. She is one of the 104 residents of the Platten Meilen retirement home in Meilen on Lake Zurich. It is the first retirement home to receive a test visit from the care robot from the company Devanthro. For a week, the robot will accompany patients on rounds and group activities. It will be controlled by the developers or a nursing professional.

One might think that the generation the robot is visiting is not so easily enthusiastic about technology.

But the opposite is the case. At least, that's what Rafael Hostettler, who co-developed the robot, says. He takes it from nursing home to nursing home. People with dementia, in particular, are open to it, he says. "The more advanced a person's dementia is, the more positively they react." They see a figure with a familiar face talking to them. And then they talk back.

Sure, some people would have found the robot creepy. Or at least funny. Hostettler says ten to twenty percent would have found it creepy.

Martha Keller isn't one of them. She says firmly: "No, I was never scared."

It's possible she's an exception. Martha Keller is generally interested in technology. She talks about a hotel in Japan she read about that was experimentally run by robots. But the personal touch is probably missing. Keller thinks aloud. "It's difficult when there's no living being behind it." Even though that does have its advantages—after all, a robot can't get on your nerves, she says, laughing.

As the robot moves from Keller's room into a conference room, people in the hallway greet him.

Hostettler says that on the dementia ward, residents would sometimes walk past the robot, pause, and wave. They would tap the screen in its head when it remained black. "Ah, no one's here," they would then say.

Hostettler developed the robot, called Robody, at the Technical University of Munich. It is based on an invention by Professor Emeritus Rolf Pfeifer at the University of Zurich. In 2013, he built the Robody's predecessor, called Roboy – a humanoid robot whose structure resembled the human musculoskeletal system. It consisted of plastic tendons that were stretched and shortened by electric motors within the robot, thus mimicking the movement of muscles.

Hostettler took this precursor to Munich and further developed it with engineer Alona Kharchenko. Together, they founded a company to market it in 2018. Initially, they sold the Robody to universities, which used it for research—for example, growing human tendons on the robot's shoulder.

In 2020, Hostettler and his team developed remote control software. They replaced the robot's head with a screen. The face of the person controlling the robot can be projected onto this screen via a VR headset. Using two joysticks, the person can move the robot's gripper arms and move it around the room. Through the headset, they see what the robot sees, and thanks to the speaker and microphone, they can speak and hear through the robot.

With this technology, Hostettler's robot can theoretically be controlled from anywhere in the world (according to Hostettler, the Maldives was the furthest away). It belongs to a very specific group of humanoid robots: telerobots.

There are currently two streams of humanoid robots: On the one hand, researchers are working on autonomous humanoid robots that move independently, i.e., without human control, because they have learned the movement sequences. On the other hand, there are telerobots, remote-controlled robots that are moved by humans.

These resemble a shell into which a person can slip. This is also called embodied telepresence.

Hostettler and his team looked for areas of application for their technology – and came across the healthcare sector.

The idea: The robot would make it easier to visit people in need of care. To do this, they would need a robot in their home or on their ward in a nursing home.

Then, for example, doctors could slip into the robot when needed and visit people, talk to them, question them, and conduct simple tests without having to walk past them themselves. Sensors in the robot can detect the person's pulse, breathing rate, and position in the room.

Nursing staff could also join in. Home care services could, for example, handle short appointments, such as dispensing medication, via robots. And the hope is that more part-time workers could be employed. Students could, for example, connect to a robot in their free time between lectures and visit and care for those in need of care in their homes or in nursing homes.

And of course, relatives who lived further away could also visit their family members in the retirement home.

That's the theory, though. The underlying theory is far more complicated. There are several arguments against the use of robots in care and support.

Franziska Feusi heads the nursing and care team at the Platten Meilen retirement home. She accompanied and supervised Hostettler and the robot during their visit over the past few days. She points to the robot standing in a corner. "We told our team from the beginning: It's okay to be against it."

Some nurses were skeptical before the robot arrived on the ward. They said, "Our job is about people." Feusi also says she doesn't see it as realistic that humans will be replaced. People will always need people.

But she also says that some of the skeptics have become curious. And a visit from relatives via robot is better than no visit at all. For many, the physical presence is more tangible, and relatives are closer than if they simply call via FaceTime. When the residents realized that their daughter's voice, for example, was echoing from the robot, some felt the need to hug the robot. Or snuggle up to its belly.

It's a sad picture. But it's a reflection of today's society. Many people are moving away for education and work and living farther away from their parents or grandparents. Devanthro advertises that the robot can give hugs from thousands of kilometers away. The robot hug might be better than no hug at all. But it's a poor substitute.

We need to start looking for creative solutions, says Feusi. She addresses the issue of aging. Current demographic trends show that people in Germany and Switzerland are living longer, while at the same time, fewer children are being born. Feusi says there aren't enough resources to care for the baby boomer generation. Robots could be used in this area.

However, the goal is not to eventually have half of their workforce represented by a robot. A realistic approach is to employ one or two robots in the future.

Safety is paramount. When it comes to mobilizing people, for example, relocating them, many forces are at work. These must be reliably assessed.

Feusi says: “We don’t see the impact directly on people.”

Robert Katzschmann, at the Institute of Robotics at ETH Zurich, researches robots that mimic biological systems. He sees the greatest challenge of telerobots like the Robody as the lack of adaptability and physical feedback when it comes to touch and actions. "Robots are still too poor at coordinating their movements with their environment," he says. The current robot hardware is therefore not yet suitable for human-robot interaction.

Through the VR headset, you can see everything the robot is doing. You can see, for example, that it's grasping a human hand. But you can't feel the handshake, making it difficult to regulate.

While there are sensors and electrical actuators that could transmit physical feedback from the robot to the remote-controlling person—for example, in the form of a glove that contracts—this is technologically challenging. A large number of data points would have to be read from the robot's hand, transmitted, and then displayed in high resolution in the glove.

Hostettler's Robody currently has pincers for hands. They can grasp and carry, but not touch and hold like human hands. Hostettler's team therefore plans to install human-like hands in the Robody next. And there's something else the robot can't do at the moment: bend over. This also means it can't pick something up from the floor if it falls. This, too, is planned for the future.

With everything the Robody can and can't do, the question arises: What's it like for the person controlling the robot? At first, it's tiring to drive the robot through the room, to grab an object and not drop it. Moving around in a virtual space for the first time can feel dizzy.

Hostettler says you get used to this kind of exertion. He can easily operate the Robody for four to five hours at a time. But such long, uninterrupted missions aren't the goal.

The robot is an interface between the real and virtual worlds. Human and machine blend together in Hostettler's universe.

He leaves the retirement home with his team and the robot. That same afternoon, they travel to a nursing home in Brugg to present the robot.

The question remains: what constitutes humanity? Is it physical presence, is it spiritual presence? Is it empathy, is it conversation, is it physical contact? Are some of these factors sufficient, or is all of them necessary?

For Hostettler, his robots are like people. At least, that's what it says on the back of his business card. "Care is human. Robodies too," it says.

An article from the « NZZ am Sonntag »