Aging at homePatient lifting robot

Patient transfer robots

Name: Patient transfer robots
Brand: FUJI (Hug), RIKEN with Sumitomo Riko (RIBA, ROBEAR research)

by FUJI (Hug), RIKEN with Sumitomo Riko (RIBA, ROBEAR research)

Transfer robots help lift a person out of bed, into a wheelchair or onto a toilet. They are meant to let one care worker do a lift that used to need two people. Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021

Stage 4 of 5

Paying customers

Which rule placed it

Evidence: Company-reported only
Human help: None reported
Last milestone: 9 Jan 2023

01Can I get it?

Yes, in places

Where it works today: Sold to care homes across Japan through nursing-care dealers (FUJI's Hug). The best-known lifting robots, RIBA and ROBEAR, stayed research prototypes and were never used in care homes. Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021
Published price: No published price in our sources.
Human help: These are not self-running robots: a care worker operates the machine during the lift. Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021

02Track record

What has actually happened

Every milestone is dated and links to the page it comes from. Lines marked company-reported rest on the maker's own word.

9 Jan 2023
Setback
A researcher who studied a Japanese care home reported that staff stopped using Hug after a few days, finding it bulky and slow to move between rooms.
MIT Technology Review, 9 Jan 2023
9 Jan 2023
Update
MIT Technology Review noted that the widely pictured ROBEAR was only ever an experiment and was never used in a real care home.
MIT Technology Review, 9 Jan 2023
9 July 2021
Paying customers · sets the stage
FUJI said it had sold 1,300 Hug units in total, through care-product dealers across Japan.
Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021Company-reported
Oct 2019
Update
FUJI released a new model, Hug T1-02, which won an award from Japan's health and welfare ministry.
Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021Company-reported
2019
Update
A national survey of more than 9,000 elder-care homes in Japan found only about 1 in 10 had brought in any care robot.
MIT Technology Review, 9 Jan 2023
April 2016
On sale · sets the stage
Japanese machine maker FUJI started selling a transfer support robot, Hug.
Dempa Shimbun (AEI), 9 Jul 2021Company-reported
23 Feb 2015
Unveiled
RIKEN and Sumitomo Riko showed ROBEAR, a lighter experimental lifting robot (140 kg, against 230 kg for the earlier RIBA-II). RIKEN later noted the project had ended.
RIKEN press release, 23 Feb 2015Company-reported
27 Aug 2009
Unveiled
Japan's RIKEN research institute and Tokai Rubber Industries showed RIBA, a robot that could lift a patient of up to 61 kg from a bed to a wheelchair and back.
RIKEN press release, 27 Aug 2009Company-reported

03Safety and incidents

What has gone wrong

No crashes, recalls or regulator reports in our sources. That is not proof none happened; we add them when a regulator or trusted outlet reports one.

How we placed it

The rule, not an opinion

Stages are worked out by published rules from the dated milestones above. We never rate robots, and no maker can pay to change a stage.

5
Regulator-cleared or mass market
A regulator has cleared it where approval applies: FDA clearance or approval for a medical robot, a permit to run with no one aboard for a self-driving vehicle, or an FAA approval for routine drone flights. Or: Widely sold: sales in the hundreds of thousands, or a product category you can buy in ordinary shops.
4
Paying customersThis robot
Delivered to customers who pay for it, beyond a trial, or a paid service the public can use.
Placed by: FUJI said it had sold 1,300 Hug units in total, through care-product dealers across Japan (9 July 2021); Japanese machine maker FUJI started selling a transfer support robot, Hug (April 2016).
3
Pilot
Working with a named customer in a real setting, as a trial.
2
Pre-orders
Orders, reservations or deposits taken, with nothing delivered yet.
1
Demo only
Shown in videos, staged events or a factory, with no units working for customers.

What we couldn't confirm. No sales figures after 2021 and no price could be confirmed. Commercial lift aids outside Japan were not researched for lack of search budget. A Japanese trade paper (Nikkan Kogyo, Apr 2021) said Hug sales had risen to about 100 a month, but this was not added because the quote is in Japanese.

Sources

Cite this page

Robotics Verdict. “Patient transfer robots (FUJI (Hug), RIKEN with Sumitomo Riko (RIBA, ROBEAR research)): how far has it got?” roboticsverdict.com/robots/transfer-robots. Checked 19 October 2026.