“Millions of people worldwide require physical assistance with daily tasks, and with an aging population, this number is rising. Caregiving robots have the potential to increase care recipient independence and reduce caregiver workload. Despite considerable recent progress in the caregiving robotics field, it remains challenging to assess the state of the art, compare different approaches, and organize efforts around pressing open research questions. Simulation platforms such as RCareWorld and Assistive Gym make significant strides, but the need for real-world standardization remains.
The PhyRC (Physical Robotic Caregiving) Challenge at ICRA 2025 (PhyRC) would be the first ever competition for caregiving robots. Our competition will feature two real-world tasks: (1) robot-assisted dressing; and (2) robot-assisted bed bathing. Dressing and bathing are both crucial activities of daily living (ADLs) that are also very challenging for state-of-the-art robotics, requiring deformable object manipulation, physical human-robot interaction, longhorizon planning, and reasoning under partial observability.”
