The population in western countries is aging at an alarming rate. At the same time, the nation faces a significant shortage of nursing professionals. People will not afford living in retirement housings nor will they afford nurses at home. The family as a concept changes into single house holds, we are forced to plan for a long lasting life where we will not be allowed to die.

We need mobile robotic assistants for nurses and elderly people in various settings.
Nursula lives with elderly people with cognitive and physical activity limitations. It is a robotic device that improves their quality of life. Nursula reminds older people not to forget dinking, to taking their medicine, remembering the space they are in, their name, their deceases, their blood pressure, their address. Nursula knows when the next visit at the doctor comes up and why one holds a glass in the hand. Nursula memorizes names and faces. Nursula helps to recognize, to get things in the right order, helps to remember something or someone. Nursula has a voice that answers easy questions. She can play memory games, she has a display that shows her knowledge.

By now the development of nursbots all over the world has reached an interesting point. The Frauenhofer institution presented their version of a mobile robotic assistant this year, the scientific team of the Carnegie Mellon University, M. Montemerlo, J. Pineau, N. Roy, S. Thrun and V. Varma developed two nursbots Flo and Pearl, the Yale New Haven Health cooperation works on a similar device.

When we started to work on this project we realized that nursbots do look like robots. We decided to work on a shape that does please elderly people. We created a bot that looks like a bot but also like a puppet, that has human features but never in a scaring way. Older people should immediately understand, that a nursbot is a friendly device, not a robot.