Meet Robin: An AI robot designed to imitate a 7-year-old comforts hospital patients

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Transcript

00:00I need to see room 21 for 20 minutes.

00:06And then you can come back and see Julia for another 10 more minutes.

00:10I wanted to build a Wally-type robot, and I learned about social robotics,

00:17the field of robotics that designs robots to work with people.

00:22A robot program to imitate a 7-year-old girl is roaming hospitals and nursing homes

00:28in an effort to bring comfort to patients.

00:33The Associated Press reports the robot named Robin uses artificial intelligence

00:38to provide emotional support for children and adults

00:42while also helping to alleviate stress on medical staff, made worse by a shortage of workers.

00:48Nurses and medical staff are really overworked under a lot of pressure.

00:53And unfortunately, a lot of times they don't have capacity to provide that.

00:57engagement and connection to patients.

01:01Robin Botts are now at 30 medical facilities from California to Massachusetts,

01:06helping people of all ages, a crucial component of her role.

01:10The primary goal of Robin is to comfort patients during their stay in medical facilities

01:17and provide engagement, entertainment, emotional support.

01:22One of the examples is a pediatric use case where kids are admitted for a long hospital stay,

01:30and they are experiencing different type of medical procedures, and a lot of them are painful.

01:36So Robin is a companion that stays with them.

01:39The emotional support bot is only partially autonomous, with the rest operated by a team of support staff.

01:45But the ultimate goal is to have her function on her own.

01:49She's currently capable of playing patients' favorite tunes, conversation, or a game of tic-tac-toe.

01:55Robin is also capable of catching on to emotions and will reflect a patient's mood when interacting with them.

02:02She's even been known to lift spirits.

02:04Yeah, I think the patients definitely know who she is.

02:08You know, she takes turns in every patient's room, you know, spending a little bit of time with them.

02:12And you can tell that the patients, when she, you know, enters the room, they light up because they know it's their turn.

02:18And efforts are reportedly underway for Robin to eventually take the vitals of patients

02:23and relay it to the rest of the medical team.

02:26Researchers also say they plan to program her to assist elderly patients with changing their clothes and bathroom visits.

02:33For more on this story, download the Straight Hour News app or visit san.com.