Service robots in caring for older adults: Uncovering the current conceptual and intellectual structures and future research agenda

•A new generation of service robots empowered by artificial intelligence indicates an increasing use of service robots in our society.•The article aims to synthesize and ssssintegrate current research on service robots in caring for older adults, identifying its intellectual structure and future research opportunities.•A total of 390 articles ranging from the year 1997 to 2022 were analyzed with text-mining and visualization methods.•Acceptance and design of robots; the social role and ethical values; obstacles and criticism; impact of using robots; therapeutic uses and perceptions of health professionals are central research themes.•Future research opportunities are proposed to advance this research. Service robots have supported human activity, mainly caring for older adults, for many years. However, a new generation of service robots empowered by artificial intelligence and other novel technologies indicates an increasing use of service robots in our society. Thus, this article aims to synthesize and integrate current research on service robots in caring for older adults, identifying its conceptual and intellectual structures and future research opportunities. A total of 390 articles ranging from the year 1997 to 2022 were analyzed with text-mining and visualization methods. We found that this research is composed of six main themes: (i) acceptance and design of robots; (ii) social role and ethical values (iii) obstacles and criticism; (iv) effects, effectiveness, and impact of using robots; (v) therapeutic use of robots and (vi) perceptions of health professionals and services. We also identified future research opportunities which researchers can use to advance the topics of this research. Identifying research clusters and key works in this multidisciplinary research field can assist researchers in understanding the current status of this research and, after that, better positioning their studies and finding avenues to move forward with the use of service robots for caring for older adults.