Caloola residents, staff embrace robot workers
A pilot project examining where technology and AI can be integrated into person-centred aged care through the use of robots has proven so popular residents and staff have named the mechanical team members.
BaptistCare Caloola Aged Care Home in Wagga Wagga has welcomed and named three new robots – Sadie, Skippy and Gretal – following a competition at the aged care facility.
The first two robots arrived to BaptistCare Caloola in February and the third was added due to popular demand. Each has a special role to help the team in their day-to-day work around the home.
For example, the cleaning robot – Sadie – vacuums the carpeted areas in the home, said head of IT strategy and innovation Petrina Greenwood, while Skippy pushes heavy laundry trolleys from the dock into the elevator and up to the linen storage area.
Gretal the concierge robot talks to the residents each morning and tells them what activities are on before spending the day by the front door meeting guests as they walk in.
“It was the residents who really wanted the concierge robot,” said Ms Greenwood.
“The other two, the cleaning robot and the laundry one, they don’t have a talking function they just do their job, so when the residents said they were disappointed the robots didn’t talk, we saw an opportunity to bring the third robot into the home.
“Now that we’ve seen how well the residents are engaging, we can explore deeper use cases such as collecting feedback and interacting in languages other than English,” she said.
The pilot is a partnership between the newly merged national BaptistCare and The Robot Factory who spent time in Wagga Wagga to see where the robots could best alleviate pressure on workers and support residents and their families.
The Robot Factory founder Tom Culver said it was great to visit Wagga Wagga and look at the unique situations aged care teams face daily.
“The laundry robot for example, we’ve taught it to navigate the tight hallways, call the elevator and manoeuvre itself to where the clean linen needs to be for staff to access,” he said.
“You can really see what a difference it’s going to make to the laundry staff when the pushing of the big, heavy laundry trolleys is done for them.”
BaptistCare has also been collaborating with the Australian Catholic University over the past year on a wearable AI device that takes down aged care workers’ observations and fills in the paperwork – to be trialled later in the year.
ACU received a $487,000 Australia’s Economic Accelerator grant and will collaborate with Microsoft and BaptistCare to develop the hands-free data input technology known as Jessie Technology.
The team will be led by ACU dean of innovation and industry engagement Professor Myriam Amielh, enterprise business partner Melinda Hunt and head of school of nursing, midwifery and paramedicine (NSW) Professor Jenny Sim.
It is hoped that through improving the data collection process and cleaning, aged care workers can focus on spending more quality time with residents.
BaptistCare received the Capacity Building Award at the 2025 ITAC awards.
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