Recently, the aging of China's population has intensified, and smart elderly care provides a solution to alleviate the plight of elderly care. The bibliometric method and CiteSpace software were used to carry out a visual atlas analysis of the research literature from 2012 to 2022. It is found that the number of papers published in the field of smart elderly care in China has increased year by year in the past ten years, and the authors and institutions mainly gather in small groups and conduct independent research, focusing on "smart elderly care", "elderly care service" and "elderly care model". Future research should be expanded from four aspects, which are deepening longitudinal research, focusing on individual needs, broadening industry boundaries, and improving laws and regulations, so as to improve research quality and level, and ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the smart elderly care industry.