Abstract: The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China explicitly proposed the comprehensive implementation of the “Artificial Intelligence (AI)+” initiative and incorporated AI into the scope of national security capacity building. Compared with traditional robots that rely on fixed rules or preset paths to complete single tasks, embodied intelligent elderly care robots possess significant growth points in aspects such as active perception, intelligent decision-making, efficient execution, and smart collaboration. Existing research focuses on disembodied intelligence, such as generative AI, while relatively neglecting the value, risks, and governance issues of embodied intelligence. The study finds that embodied intelligent elderly care robots enable and facilitate elderly care services through four dimensions namely “perception-decision-making-service-evolution”. Simultaneously, they face numerous practical obstacles stemming from technical architectures, application scenarios, and ethical values. To break through these developmental barriers, it is necessary to construct trustworthy algorithm and ontology architectures, optimize human-robot interaction and clarify responsibility subjects, and implement value alignment alongside humanistic care. While promoting technological development, it is essential to synchronously build a governance system adaptable to it, thereby driving the deep integration and high-quality development of the “AI+” initiative and elderly care services.

Key words: artificial intelligence, elderly care services, embodied intelligent robots, smart elderly care