Abstract
Over the engineering history, environmental and social needs inspire the development and innovation of many wonderful applications. For example, when the industrial robots entered our industrial life, great advances especially in automotive industry where the industrial robots cover about 90 % of the car industry activities started to change our own life. As the number of elderly people is increasing rapidly all over the world, this requires us to focus on their needs as their children left them alone in our busy daily life. Mechatronics and robotics can offer many possibilities to help elderly people by providing smart solutions for their daily needs as well as entertaining them during their lonely long stay at their homes. Many companies are providing smart mobile robots in different platforms (wheeled or walking) to help the elderly people depend on themselves in receiving their food and medicine at prescheduled times. Other companies are interested in providing smart wheel chairs to help the elderly people navigate indoor and outdoor freely and conveniently without any external help. Meanwhile, some companies are providing entertainment robots in different shapes to talk, play and communicate with elderly people in a nice way. The objective of this paper is to explore the mechatronics and robotics capabilities to assist elderly people and to make their life easier, comfortable and self-governing without any external help. This paper will highlight also the effect of the environment and the social needs in inspiring new innovations. As an example, the innovations by Badi Az-Zaman Ismail Al-Jazari, a Muslim scientist, will be investigated.
 This paper is going to discuss also the idea and the motivation behind two of Al-Jazari’s robotic applications (Although the term robot was not coined at that time). These two devices are the washing hands and the peacock fountain. Although he used to apply mechanical structure and fluid for controlling the motion of the two devices, they were very beautiful and resemble some of the robotic applications nowadays. 
Highlights
According to the statistics from the United Nations report shown in Figure 1, Figure 2 the number of elderly people over the age of 65 will increase dramatically in the coming four decades all over the world
This paper aims to explore the mechatronics and robotics capabilities to assist elderly people and make their lives easier, comfortable, and self-governing without any external help
Due to the recent development in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), many control techniques are available for intelligent wheelchairs
Summary
According to the statistics from the United Nations report shown in Figure 1, Figure 2 the number of elderly people over the age of 65 will increase dramatically in the coming four decades all over the world. This number is increasing in the advanced countries compared to the third-world countries since they have highly efficient healthcare programs to take care of elderly people. The situation is less problematic in third world countries, where many chronic diseases are still there, and many people die because of a lack of efficient health care programs and efficient medications and drugs The organization of this paper is as follows: Section (2) focuses on health care robots for elderly people, while section (3) investigates the advancements of intelligent wheelchairs for the benefit of elderly people. Religious requirements, followed by the concluding remarks in section (6) and references
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