Successful robot trial of smart eldercare

A laundry-folding robot demonstrates its skills at the smart eldercare robotics station in Beijing E-Town in March. ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY

At the Ronghua subdistrict smart eldercare hub in Beijing's southern outskirts, 74-year-old Ren comes for the food. The steamed buns are soft, the vegetable dishes change daily, and the canteen's robot chef — a stainless-steel contraption that stir-fries with mechanical precision — never takes a day off.

"The cafeteria is very good, and the food is delicious," said Ren, who took a one-hour bus ride from her home to visit the facility for the second time. She said she initially came to solve what she called the "dining problem" of old age.

"When I can't take care of myself anymore, then I'll think about how to get through those days. For now, I just need good meals."

Ren has yet to try the exoskeleton suits on the fourth floor or the artificial intelligence-powered massage robots on the third. But she is exactly the kind of customer that the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area — better known as Beijing E-Town (Yizhuang) — is betting on as it races to build a "smart eldercare" model that pairs an aging population with the district's booming robotics industry.

The 1,100-square-meter facility, which opened in March, is a cross between a community center, a tech showroom, and a nursing home. It is one of four such stations (the other three being traditional ones) in the Ronghua subdistrict, where officials say more than a quarter of residents are over 60 — a figure that climbs to 35 percent in some neighborhoods.

"The aging situation is severe," said Zhang Li, a subdistrict official responsible for eldercare services."We wanted to go beyond the basic services of traditional stations and bring in the frontier technology that Yizhuang is known for."

The station's operating model is a three-way partnership: the local government provides funding and oversight, a private operator runs daily services, and a platform called the "Robot Mall" — a State-backed enterprise — curates and supplies machines from 24 robotics firms.

Since its opening, 43 different robots have been deployed across the building, ranging from a pancake-making machine near the facility entrance to a chess-playing robotic arm in the recreation room. Officials said about 10 of those robots have since been withdrawn for modifications based on user feedback.