Toilet Assist Robot: From Commodes to ABB Cobots

Helping someone use the toilet is one of the most frequent jobs in a care home, and one of the hardest on a carer's back. It happens day and night, it often involves lifting, and residents care a great deal about how it is done. A toilet assist robot is meant to take some of that load. This post traces the job from close stools and bedpans through grab rails and electric toilet lifts to the excretion care devices Japan has backed since 2012, looks at a new humanoid trial in Japanese nursing homes, and asks where ABB robots could fit.

A toilet in Japan with wall handrails and a fold-down support arm beside the seat, 2017. Photo: 湖の国の王子 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

From close stools to grab rails and toilet lifts

For most of history, toilet help meant a servant, a family member or a nurse, plus a pot. Wealthy households used the close stool, a box with a lidded seat over a chamber pot, and the Tudor court had an officer called the Groom of the Stool who attended the king. Hampton Court still keeps close stools in its collection, including one dated to around 1650. Hospitals and homes relied on bedpans for people who could not get up at all, and a nurse emptied and cleaned each one by hand. That routine changed very little until the twentieth century.

A velvet close stool from around 1650 in the Hampton Court collection. Photo: Lobsterthermidor / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The next aids were mechanical and simple. Commode chairs put a seat and a pan on a frame that could stand beside the bed. Grab rails, fold-down arms and toilet seat risers helped people sit and stand on their own for longer, and mobile patient lifts with a sling let one carer move a person from bed to wheelchair to toilet without carrying them. Later came electric toilet lifts, seats that rise to help a weak person get up. TOTO has shown such seats in its Japanese showrooms, with the control built into the armrest. Our post on patient lifting robots covers the hoist side of the story.

An electrically raised toilet seat for older people in a TOTO showroom in Japan, with its control in the right armrest. Photo: Chris 73 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Japan made toileting a policy target. TOTO launched its Washlet warm water bidet seat in 1980, and the long-term care insurance system started in 2000. In 2012 the health ministry and METI named priority fields for robotic care equipment, and excretion support was one of them, next to transfer, mobility and monitoring. The list was revised in 2014 and 2017. Products followed: TOTO's room-mounted mobile flush toilet for bedside use, Aronkasei's vacuum drainage portable toilet, and Muscle Inc.'s ROBOHELPER LOVE-S, which collects and treats waste automatically for people in bed. Fuji's Hug lifts a seated person so a carer can move them from wheelchair to toilet seat.

A Washlet bidet toilet seat with its side control panel in a hotel in Kotohira, Japan, 2002. Photo: Adriano / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Care homes trying robots for toilet help today

The latest news comes from Osaka and Tokyo. On October 5, 2026, Charm Care, which runs more than 100 private nursing homes in the Kansai and Greater Tokyo areas, said it will invest 300 million yen in donut robotics. Since July 2026 the two companies have been testing donut robotics' humanoid, cinnamon, in one of Charm Care's homes. It already patrols. The next step is nurse calls: a resident presses the button, the robot comes, hears the request and helps staff answer it. If the robot can sort requests, such as a resident asking for help to the toilet, carers could save some of those walks.

PARO, a Japanese robot seal used with people with dementia in care homes, on display at an exhibit. Photo: Syced / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Robots that do the physical part are further along in narrow tasks. Automatic excretion systems attach to a person in bed, detect waste, remove it by suction, then wash and dry the skin. A 2023 study in South Korea measured carers using CURACO's CareBidet against paper diapers in a mock nursing home. Lower back muscle activity during the actual care fell by 25.6 percent, although preparing and cleaning the device added strain. Uptake is still slow. MIT Technology Review reported in 2023 that a 2019 survey found only about 10 percent of more than 9,000 Japanese elder care institutions had introduced any care robot.

A bedpan from the Wellcome Collection, the kind of hand care that automatic excretion systems aim to replace. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

ABB does not make a toilet assist robot, and we found no ABB project in excretion care. Its robots are already in the bathroom supply chain, though. At MKW in Austria an ABB robot handles toilet seats on the production line. For care itself, the closest fit is the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot, which has torque sensors in its joints and stops when it feels unexpected contact. ABB has shown GoFa at its healthcare research hub and a mobile YuMi concept for hospital labs. Using either one near a resident's body would be a new application, and ABB has not announced one.

An ABB robot handling toilet seats at MKW in Austria. Photo: ABB

Where robotic toilet help goes next

In homes, the first gains will probably come from smart seats and lifts rather than arms. Seats that rise, wash and dry are already sold, and sensors that predict when someone needs the toilet are one of the excretion support categories Japan's ministry lists. A humanoid that walks a person to the bathroom is still a research goal. Holding up a person who may fall needs force control and a fast stop, problems close to the ones ABB's SafeMove software handles for industrial cells, where it limits a robot's speed and reach inside set zones.

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

Factories will keep building the hardware. Toilet lifts, washing seats and excretion care units are made from molded plastic, pumps and electronics, the kind of parts robots already assemble and test. A single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 or a GoFa could fit small, mixed batches of care devices, and engineers usually lay out and test such a cell first in RobotStudio. Care devices sell in far smaller numbers than cars or phones, so a cell has to pay off at low volume.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

The open problems are cost, safety and dignity. A care home has to pay for the robot, train staff, and keep the device clean, and Japan's survey numbers show how many homes have not made that bet yet. Residents also have to agree to a machine in the most private part of their day. For now, expect robots to answer calls, carry and fetch, and help with lifting, while a person still does the hands-on help. Our post on ABB robots in elder care looks at the wider picture.

An accessible toilet with fold-down grab rails in Harlow, Essex, 2023. Photo: Acabashi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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