Introducing Sadie, Skippy and Gretal: Three robots settle into their new home at BaptistCare Caloola Aged Care home

Three new residents are settling into their new home at BaptistCare Caloola aged care home in Wagga Wagga.

Gretal, Sadie and Skippy, all lovingly named by residents, families and employees at BaptistCare Caloola, are a team of robots designed to work in an aged care setting. 

The robotics pilot is part of BaptistCare’s broader innovation strategy to examine where technology, innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) can integrate alongside person-centered care to support employees and residents.

In February, BaptistCare Caloola Aged Care Home in Wagga Wagga welcomed the first two robots into the home and due to popular demand from the residents, a third has more recently been added to the team.

Each robot has a different purpose in supporting the BaptistCare Caloola team in their day-to-day work around the home.

“We have a cleaning robot that supports the cleaning crew by vacuuming carpeted areas in the home,” Petrina Greenwood, Head of IT Strategy and Innovation, said.

“Along with a robot that pushes the heavy laundry trolleys from the dock, into the elevator and up to where the clean linen is stored. And a concierge robot that each morning talks to the residents and tells them what activities are on in the home before spending the day by the front door meeting guests as they walk in.”

BaptistCare has partnered with The Robot Factory who have spent time on site in Wagga Wagga looking at where robots can help to lift pressure off aged care employees and support residents and their families to navigate around the home.

“It’s been great to be here and looking at the unique situations aged care teams face every day,” said Tom Culver, founder of The Robot Factory.

“The laundry robot for example, we’ve taught it to navigate the tight hallways, call the elevator and manoeuvre itself to where the clean linen needs to be for staff to access.”

“As we get it up and running at Caloola and work the local team to use it, you can really see what a difference it’s going to make to the laundry staff when the pushing of the big, heavy laundry trolleys is done for them,” said Tom.

As the robots settled into their new home, BaptistCare Caloola employees and residents started interacting with them.

“It was the residents who really wanted the concierge robot,” said Petrina Greenwood.

“The other two, the cleaning robot and the laundry one, they don’t have a talking function they just do their job, so when the residents said they were disappointed the robots didn’t talk, we saw an opportunity to bring the third robot into the home.”

“Now that we’ve seen how well the residents are engaging, we can explore deeper use cases such as collecting feedback and interacting in languages other than English,” she said.

BaptistCare Caloola resident Anne Coia was the first resident to find the games on the concierge robot and can often be seen sitting side by side playing naughts and crosses.

“It’s a great little thing,” Anne said.

“It comes in every morning into our living room to tell us what’s happening for the day, it takes you around the place and it really is the future. All the robots are.”

Karen Annetts works in the BaptistCare Caloola cleaning team and after a little bit of apprehension, she’s enjoying working with the robots.

“It can’t take our jobs, we’re irreplaceable,” Karen laughed.

“But seriously, I wasn’t sure how it would work at first, but we did the training and have started seeing how great it is.”

“It goes about its business vacuuming throughout the day leaving us time to focus on other parts of the home that need our attention. It also means we can stop and have a chat with a resident as we’re working, and that’s really lovely,” she said.

The BaptistCare Caloola community was tasked with naming the three robots, and three great names were picked from employees, residents, and their family's suggestions.

Sadie is the cleaning robot, Skippy is the laundry robot, and Gretal is the concierge robot.

This robotics trial was recently featured on the ABC 730 program and is one part of the broader innovation and technology strategy BaptistCare is implementing across the organisation.

In addition to this partnership with The Robot Factory, BaptistCare is working with the Australian Catholic University on a wearable AI device that will be trialled later in the year.

BaptistCare’s work in innovation was recognised at the 2025 Innovation Transforming Aged Care Awards (ITAC) where it won the Capacity Building Award.