Driven by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, supportive policies for the silver economy, and significant capital market attention, the elderly care robot industry is accelerating its transition from the introductory phase to the growth phase. However, challenges such as insufficient demand scenarios, technological bottlenecks, and a lack of standardized systems persist. How to bridge the "last mile" for elderly care robots is a critical question the industry must address.
The elderly care robot market is vast. "The market size for service robots will far exceed that of industrial robots, but it is still in its early stages of development," stated Zhao Jie, Director of the Robotics Institute at Harbin Institute of Technology. With breakthroughs in AI, improvements in the precision and service capabilities of robots are becoming feasible, potentially propelling the industry from its initial phase into a period of rapid expansion. Within this sector, elderly care robots are poised for a breakthrough, with their forms not limited to humanoid designs, allowing for diverse development paths.
"Population aging is intensifying the supply-demand imbalance in elderly care services. Simply increasing manpower is unlikely to solve the problem; we must rely on technological means to achieve a structural upgrade in service capacity," said Li Mengwei, General Manager of the Robot and Intelligent Equipment Research and Evaluation Division at the China Software Testing Center. Technology not only helps address the question of "who will care for the elderly" but also serves as a driving force for building a sustainable elderly care service system, indicating an extremely broad future market for care robots.
The "Research Report on the Development of Intelligent Elderly Care Service Robots (2026 Edition)" recently released by the China Software Testing Center shows that the industrial chain system for elderly care robots—encompassing upstream core components, midstream whole-machine manufacturing, and downstream application scenarios—has been initially established, with the market maintaining a high growth rate. The report predicts that China's elderly care service robot market will exceed 100 billion yuan this year.
Industry insiders believe the application scenarios for elderly care robots are expanding from institutions to homes and communities. "With their professional facilities, staffing, and service capabilities, institutions will remain the primary setting for deploying elderly care robots in the short term. The home market represents a blue ocean for growth. Home settings will gradually take on professional care functions, becoming the most important long-term growth source for elderly care robots," Li Mengwei noted.
The development of elderly care robots has entered an accelerated phase since last year. The rapid progress in AI technology has continuously enhanced these robots' capabilities in perceiving complex environments, understanding them, and making autonomous decisions. On the policy front, eight departments including the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly issued measures to foster business entities in elderly care services and promote the silver economy, explicitly encouraging the development of the elderly care robot industry. Various provinces and cities have also introduced supporting policies to accelerate industrial layout.
Currently, differences among sub-sectors of elderly care robots are quite distinct. Rehabilitation robots have the most mature technology and a clear development path. Nursing care robots face high technical barriers and are still in the verification stage. Companion robots have lower barriers to entry, but willingness to pay for them needs validation. Monitoring robots have strong, rigid demand and significant potential for widespread adoption.
According to incomplete statistics, there are already 30 A-share listed companies involved in rehabilitation robots. Approximately 10 A-share listed companies have elderly care rehabilitation robots or related industrial chain segments as their main business, primarily focusing on areas such as lower-limb exoskeleton robots, intelligent rehabilitation equipment, and brain-computer interface rehabilitation systems. Meanwhile, a number of innovative startups focusing on safety monitoring and alerts for home care scenarios, the development and batch application of full-scenario embodied elderly care robots, and the development of nursing robots for semi-disabled or disabled elderly individuals have attracted investment institution interest and completed multiple funding rounds.
The report points out that the elderly care robot industry overall exhibits the characteristic of "objective demand existing, but effective conversion being insufficient," with supply and demand not yet fully aligned.
From the supply side, although the industrial chain system is initially established, there is insufficient collaboration between upstream and downstream sectors. The market landscape is fragmented, with no leading enterprise yet emerging, and there remains external dependence for some high-precision core components. From the demand side, especially in the home sector, penetration is slow, constrained by factors such as price sensitivity, differences in usage habits, and low trust in products.
"There is a structural gap between current technological capabilities and the demands of complex elderly care scenarios, mainly reflected in adaptability to dynamic, unstructured environments, safety in human-robot interaction, and long-term operational reliability," Li Mengwei explained. For example, multi-modal perception technology can already achieve functions like fall detection, voice interaction, and physiological data collection, demonstrating high accuracy in laboratory settings. However, significant interference in home environments—such as variable lighting, obstructions, and noise—leads to decreased stability of vision systems and accuracy of voice recognition, making data fusion challenging.
Simultaneously, the development of standard systems needs continuous advancement. Currently, there is no independent, mature specialized standard system for elderly care robots. The industry primarily relies on extending and adapting general standard frameworks for service robots and medical rehabilitation robots, which struggle to meet the needs for industry standardization.
In response, industry insiders suggest focusing on three areas: First, intensifying efforts to tackle key technologies, strengthening the role of enterprises as innovation entities, and encouraging close industry-university-research-application collaboration to break through in areas like intelligent perception. Second, adhering to scenario-driven development, basing efforts on the diverse needs of the elderly population, and guiding enterprises to iterate products in real-world scenarios, enabling new technologies and products to enter communities, institutions, and homes. Third, optimizing the industrial ecosystem, accelerating the formulation of standards related to elderly care service robots, improving safety and other specifications, encouraging innovative business models like leasing services and insurance payments, and exploring the implementation of product identification management for robots to enrich industry management methods.
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