As the U.S. faces a worsening shortage of care for the elderly, can robots fill the gap?

After outliving Booker T. Bones, their second service dog, Brenda and Brian Marquis still needed help with some of the difficult parts of daily life. They found Robbie, a robot that rolls out of a hallway into their living room several times a day. “Do you want to exercise now? Please answer yes or no,” the caregiver robot asks 59-year-old Brian Marquis, who has been living with a traumatic brain injury since a 2012 car crash. “Yes,” he responds. Then he stands up as the robot’s googly-eyed digital screen “face” morphs into an exercise video that guides him through an afternoon workout.