Abstract: The use of care robots can be an effective way to alleviate the lack of competence in geriatric care in the context of aging; however, they have obvious limitations in providing true human care and fitting the elements of care. Based on an ethic of care perspective, this paper comparatively analyzes the gap between robotic care and traditional human care in terms of the four ethical elements of care: attention, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, and points out that the essence of gerontological care should be more than just a simple practice, but rather lies in the concern for the vulnerability and dignity of older people, as well as in a social strategy for positive aging. As a result, a triple iterative technical design pathway of value-sensitive design (VSD) is utilized to integrate human care values into the design process of care robots, aiming to preserve and promote the core values of human care in the face of the great potential and obvious limitations of care robots.

Key Words: Caregiving robots; Ethics of care; Human care; Geriatric care; Value sensitive design