Funding / Jury · about 3 minutes
Physical AI Pflege Lab, in ten answers.
Concrete, not hype. Everything below that does not exist yet is marked as planned.
Care is short of time, not of compassion.
Germany’s population is ageing while care homes struggle to find staff. A large share of every shift goes into walking, fetching, carrying and restocking — physical, repetitive tasks that take time away from residents.
A lab that prepares robots for real care settings.
Physical AI Pflege Lab will train, simulate, test and validate existing robots from manufacturers for low-risk care logistics — before they enter a care home.
Vertical Physical AI infrastructure for Pflege.
- Digital twins and scenario libraries of real German care rooms.
- Training and testing designed with care professionals, not only engineers.
- Measurable safety and performance validation — evidence a care home can rely on.
Robot manufacturers first, care providers second.
Manufacturers need a credible path into the German / DACH care market. Pflegeheime need assistance they can trust. The lab sits between them.
B2B services, then reusable assets.
Planned offers: Pflege Readiness Pilot, Simulation & Scenario Development, Physical AI Training, Validation-as-a-Service, DACH Market Readiness, Pflege Pilot Implementation. Later: scenario libraries and benchmarks.
“A resident requests water.”
Understand the request, recognise objects, navigate, identify the cup, grasp, transport, place within reach — and stop safely when a person, wheelchair or walker crosses the path. No lifting, no resident contact.
Dela Kunzmann, Cologne.
Solo founder, full-time. Her father lives on another continent and increasingly needs care; she knows from experience what distance means for families. Background in enterprise technology sales across DACH and the UK — building pipeline with large organisations and opening new markets. Languages: German, English, Persian, French, Arabic.
Simulation first. Concrete later.
Today: founder, concept, ≈ €13,000 founder capital → Phase 1 customer discovery and simulation → Phase 2 first Pflege scenario → Phase 3 manufacturer partnership → Phase 4 Cologne prototype lab → Phase 5 Pflege pilot → Phase 6 commercial validation services.
Twelve months to reach Phase 2.
The Gründungsstipendium.NRW would secure the founder’s livelihood for twelve months of full-time work. The founder capital is planned for simulation tools and compute, a basic set of test objects, visits to care homes and manufacturers, and company formation.
Goal at the end of the year: validated customer problem, first scenario running in simulation, and at least one manufacturer and one care home in conversation about a pilot.
More capacity for care.
Less repetitive work and more human time — robots that have proven themselves before they meet a resident. Built in Cologne for the future of European care.