Hospital Robots: AI-Powered Humanoids Replace Healthcare Workers (Future of Work)

Countries with aging populations are increasingly turning to robots amid worsening healthcare worker shortages. As governments and investors pump money into AI-powered robots, they're becoming smarter with better navigation, communication, and data-sharing capabilities. While they can be expensive up front, they can help reduce costs over time, working around the clock without breaks or overtime pay. With funding from an EU program focused on cross-border healthcare automation, SDU Robotics is developing modular service robots to assume non-medical hospital roles. SDU is based at the Maersk McKinney-Mahler Institute, which is part of the University of Southern Denmark. The institute is known for cutting-edge research in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence for healthcare and industrial applications. They're leading the Hospobot project with 1.6 million euros, or 1.7 million US dollars, from the European Union's Interreg Deutschland Denmark program. Launched in September 2023, the Hospobot project is set to run until August 2026. It's coordinated by the university in partnership with hospitals in Denmark and Germany. The project aims to address healthcare staff shortages by automating routine tasks like greeting and guiding patients and visitors, small-scale logistics, light cleaning and disinfection of surfaces, assisting with parking registration, and locating lost items. The Hospobot project focuses on social interaction to reduce patient anxiety, especially for children. Hospobot's humanoid module, Hugo, has been deployed in the children's ward at Odense University Hospital, where it actively engages with patients through friendly gestures such as waving and pointing toward information kiosks. We are building robots for hospitals with interaction in mind, robots which will be able to interact with patients and visitors of the hospital. The humanoid's modular mobile base can attach payloads for different tasks. The SDU team is addressing challenges with social robots in hospital settings. The biggest hurdles include translating the needs of healthcare professionals into technical specifications for engineers and ensuring the robot is compact enough to navigate narrow corridors. The Hospobot team is refining the humanoid's interaction modules to make communication with patients more intuitive. They're also drafting standardized guidelines for the use of hospital robots across different healthcare systems. In France, Enchanted Tools is developing new age service robots to take on social logistics and repetitive tasks in healthcare settings. Jérôme Minceau, who helped create the social robots Pepper and Now, founded the startup that says it's ushering in the post-robot era. Its flagship humanoid robot, Maroka, is also intended for retail, hospitality, and events. What's your name? Hello, my name is Maroka. I'm so happy to be here. So am I. I've seen a lot of good stuff. Maroka is a social logistic robot designed for places like hospitals, nursing homes, and airports. It's friendly, has personality, and will transport small items. Maroka is now being trained at Accenture. The global tech consulting giant's robotics team is exploring how to integrate the AI robot into computer systems across industries. Maroka moves using a special rolling globe system. Standing 1.3 meters, the robot weighs around 30 kilos or 66 pounds. Mirakai's arms have 28 degrees of freedom. Its battery stays charged for about eight hours. The robots come with a backstory that's quite elaborate. The Maroka are a species from space, dating back to ancient times, created to help humans think more about understanding others. They inspire through their creativity. They're extremely tech-savvy, wise, and kind, guiding humans to connect better with others and grow as people. The company worked with French film studio Gaumont to bring the story to life with animation. Das hier hinter mir sieht noch sehr nach Science Fiction aus, aber dieser Roboter ist tatsächlich bereits im Einsatz, zumindest testweise. Germany, with one of the world's oldest populations, faces significant challenges in supporting its seniors while maintaining their independence and dignity. Enter Roboty, a German humanoid robot designed to revolutionize home care. Garching-based Devanthro says the robot has been tested in real homes, proving it can operate in unmodified conditions. Controlled by teleoperation, Roboty can help with tasks like cooking, giving medication, finding lost items, and socializing. With haptic feedback and advanced VR controls, someone anywhere in the world can provide physical assistance, making it much easier for aging individuals to stay comfortably at home. The Roboty has soft skin for safe home use and can be customized to match a household style. In the U.S., Texas-based Diligent Robotics develops autonomous robots to assist health care workers by handling routine, non-clinical tasks. Robotics experts Andrea Thomas and Vivian Chu launched the Austin-based startup in 2017. Diligent Robotics is a company that is building robots to do support tasks for the clinical staff in acute care hospitals. Our company is really working on some of the core technology that's going to enable robots to be deployed in these sort of dynamic settings. Diligent's flagship robot, Moxi, navigates hospital corridors autonomously. The humanoid mobile service robot moves with the wheeled base, independently avoiding obstacles and using elevators. Its robotic arm can grasp, pull, open, and guide objects to perform logistical tasks without human intervention. Diligent Robotics says Moxi social intelligence is designed to interact seamlessly with human health care workers. As of November 2024, Moxi robots have completed more than 110,000 autonomous elevator rides across health care systems in the U.S. The robots complete over 20,000 fully autonomous elevator rides each month, which the startup says shows their consistent use in hospital operations. Moxi service bots have been deployed in hospitals since 2018, delivering supplies to patient rooms, transporting lab samples, and fetching items for nursing units. Adoption surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, and by the end of 2023, 100 Moxi robots were in over 30 hospitals. Moxi's creators tout the technology's plug-and-play design that allows for quick deployments. The robots come with preloaded software and configurations for key hospital tasks. Moxi's AI-driven mapping system, called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, or SLAM, rapidly maps hospital layouts without extensive manual programming. The navigation system adapts to real-time changes to its surroundings. Trained teams assist hospitals during initial deployments, but Diligent says Moxi's interface is user-friendly, so staffers can manage it without technical expertise. In Japan, Panasonic produces autonomous robots for delivering medications, lab samples, and medical supplies in hospitals. Introduced in 2013, the Hospi robots use advanced sensors to navigate corridors and avoid obstacles independently. A locked compartment ensures secure transport of supplies. Panasonic says the robot minimizes the need for human contact with sick patients, which is useful for infection control. And in China, AI-powered robots like the Cloud Ginger provide interactive support and perform tasks in healthcare, retail, security, and hospitality settings. The robot, developed by Beijing-based CloudMind, has a humanoid appearance with arms for gesturing and assisting. Ginger's AI gets real-time updates from the cloud. The robot speaks multiple languages and features an interactive display on its chest for guiding users. Robots like Ginger are a priority in China, whose government is determined to rule the emerging humanoid robotics market by 2027. To stay up to date as the field evolves rapidly, make sure to subscribe.