Robots & Seniors: Baptist Senior Family and Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to create technological advances for senior care communities moving forward

“How does a 115-year-old organization prepare for the future needs of older adults? With 11,000 Boomers daily entering retirement, how can we prepare to meet their needs and sustain our missional relevance? Through an innovative, collaborative partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, ‘the birthplace of Artificial Intelligence.’ Together, we study problems older adults face and look for appropriate, dignified solutions through science, dialogue and technology.”

Dr. Z. Allen Abbott, Baptist Senior Family Vice President of Philanthropy, spoke very highly of the partnership they have with Carnegie Mellon. It is a partnership that shows the adaptability of a longstanding senior care community, as well as the importance of keeping up with the times.

“For over a century, Baptist Senior Family has been an innovator,” Abbott mentioned. “Starting as an orphanage then expanding to care for widows, Baptist Homes embodied the faithfulness of American Baptists in Western Pennsylvania.”

Baptist Senior Family has no doubt been unafraid of change. The community they have served has changed a bit over the years, but their mission has remained the same. They still want to provide the best care possible for every single one of the seniors in their community.

In fact, they believe that in the current times, providing the best care possible for these seniors includes implementing technology. While the generation Baptist Senior Family serves tends to push back against technology, they tend to be accepting of the technology introduced through Carnegie Mellon University.

“I am honored to live in a community that is dedicated to innovation and technology to improve the lives of older adults,” Providence Point Resident Ron Feller said. “Baptist Senior Family is committed to discovering affordable and appropriate solutions, opening the doors for other communities to follow.”

At the end of the day, it is all about creating the best possible care for their residents. Baptist Senior Family knows that implementing new technology sounds expensive, but their partnership with Carnegie Mellon Universityhelps to keep it as low-cost as possible.

It is a very successful partnership too. In fact, it is so successful that it has been rewarded with the 2025 LeadingAge PA Innovation of the Year Award. It is an award win a couple years in the making, as this partnership is still in the early stages.

“Since 2023, the joint venture between Baptist Senior Family and Carnegie Mellon University demonstrates a shared commitment to assistive robotic technology that restores life and dignity for older adults facing challenges in limb control and memory,” Abbott said. “We see opportunities to help develop intelligence and robotics that will benefit the entire field of aging services.”

Baptist Senior Family wants what is best for their seniors, and they believe their residents have an opportunity to live a more fulfilling life in their later years. From the memory support study entitled “ChatGPT for Assistive Robotics” to their Obi the robot study, Baptist Senior Family and Carnegie Mellon work hard to provide the best interactive robotics for the community’s residents possible.

“With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the project tested Large Language Models written by CMU students integrated into Obi’s feeding robot,” Feller said. “The tabletop-size robot responds to voice commands and ‘feeds’ the resident with specific requested items. For example, I said, ‘Obi, I would like some blueberries,’ and Obi scooped up some berries and placed them in front of my mouth.”

They ran another study focused on creating an assistive cooking system for older adults. They ran the study on residents clinically diagnosed with mild dementia or Alzheimer’s, and it is focused on allowing residents to still feel more like themselves.

“At both our campuses, we staged Independent Living apartments with cameras and instructed each resident to enter the kitchen and cook some spaghetti, broccoli and other items,” Abbott said. “They were given no further instructions, but they did experience devised distractions. They were filmed and studied for sequencing, reaction to the distractions, and recall.”

All this has been done to help understand the needs of residents, as well as to help meet those needs as much as possible. This partnership is aimed to help knock the negative notions of living in a senior care community, and help seniors feel more like themselves as well.

“Baptist Senior Family is building retirement living options for the residents of 10 to 15 years from now,” Abbott said. “Boomers are the innovation generation. The first iPhone was 2008, fully 16 years ago now; those users are the residents of today. Innovation just means a ‘lab mentality’—being willing to test methodologies, come up with new hypotheses, improve some practices, and drop others. We are committed to data, especially in healthcare.”

You have to start somewhere, and that is where the partnership between Baptist Senior Family and Carnegie Mellon comes into play. Dr. Zackary Erikson and his team at CMU are devoted to developing physically assistive robots. They have the opportunity to help those with neurodegenerative diseases, spinal cord diseases, or those who have suffered a stroke and  have lost motor functions. They want to use their technological skills for good.

They are even figuring out robotic manipulation for items like garments and blankets to even better serve the senior care community.

“We are also pleased as staff to be directly involved with these ventures, maintaining the human touch with our residents,” Abbott said. “This mitigates some of the reticence about Al, robotics and other technologies. We believe assistive robots can help empower people to live more independently and reduce the physical burden placed on nurses and human caregivers.”

It is not to avoid that human connection either, as Baptist Senior Family believes the connection is imperative. However, maybe there is a future where that human connection involves helping these seniors be able to stick around their families longer while getting the robotic care and help they need.

“It’s very possible that in the future everyone will get the care they want or need at home, without moving,” Abbott said. “Baptist Senior Family is committed to embracing the future and improving the quality of life for all older adults. Our partnership with Carnegie Mellon University is likely to yield industry-wide innovations for the next generation.”

This partnership is just the beginning. Both Baptist Senior Family and Carnegie Mellon University hope what they are doing becomes more of the industry standard as opposed to a one-off, as they believe that with enough research and testing, technology can improve the quality of life within the senior community by the time it’s time for the next generation to start looking at senior care.