Days after Meagan Brazil-Sheehan\u2019s 6-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, they were walking down the halls of UMass Memorial Children\u2019s Medical Center when they ran into Robin the Robot.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuca, how are you?\u201d it asked in a high-pitched voice programmed to sound like a 7-year-old girl. \u201cIt\u2019s been awhile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brazil-Sheehan said they had only met the 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter-tall) robot with a large screen displaying cartoonlike features once before after they were admitted several days earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis face lit up,\u201d she said about the interaction in June in Worcester, Massachusetts. \u201cIt was so special because she remembered him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robin is an\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>-powered therapeutic robot programed to act like a little girl as it provides emotional support at nursing homes and hospital pediatric units while helping combat staffing shortages. Five years after launching in the U.S., it has become a familiar face in 30 health care facilities in California, Massachusetts, New York and Indiana.<\/p>\n \u201cNurses and medical staff are really overworked, under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, a lot of times they don\u2019t have capacity to provide engagement and connection to patients,\u201d said Karen Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which developed the robot. \u201cRobin helps to alleviate that part from them.\u201d<\/p>\n As AI increasingly becomes a part of daily life, it\u2019s found a foothold in medical care \u2014 providing everything from\u00a0note-taking during exams<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0electronic nurses<\/a>. While heralded by some for the efficiency it brings, others worry about its impact on patient care.<\/p>\n Robin is about 30% autonomous, while a team of operators working remotely controls the rest under the watchful eyes of clinical staff. Khachikyan said that with each interaction, they\u2019re able to collect more data \u2014 while still complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA \u2014 and get closer to it being able to function independently.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We\u2019re trying to create that,\u201d he said, referencing the 2008 animated film.<\/p>\n Making its rounds<\/p>\n On a recent Friday, a staff member at HealthBridge Children\u2019s Hospital in Orange County, California, read off a list of patients she needed Robin to visit, along with the amount of time to spend with each one.<\/p>\n The robot with a sleek white triangle-shaped frame that Khachikyan said was designed for hugging, rolled into a room with a teenager injured in a car accident. The robot played what it described as his favorite song \u2014 \u201cNo Fear\u201d by DeJ Loaf \u2014 and he danced along. In the hallway, Robin cracked up a young child held by her mother when it put on a series of silly glasses and a big red nose. In another room, the robot played a simplified version of tic-tac-toe with a patient.<\/p>\n Samantha da Silva, speech language pathologist at the hospital, said patients light up when Robin comes into their room and not only remembers their names but their favorite music.<\/p>\n \u201cShe brings joy to everyone,\u201d da Silva said. \u201cShe walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello.\u201d<\/p>\n Robin mirrors the emotions of the person it is talking with, explained Khachikyan. If the patient is laughing then the robot laughs along, but if they\u2019re sharing something difficult, its face reflects sadness and empathy.<\/p>\n In nursing homes, Robin plays memory games with people suffering from dementia, takes them through breathing exercises on difficult days and offers them a form of companionship that resembles a grandchild with a grandparent.<\/p>\n Khachikyan recalled a moment last year at a facility in Los Angeles where a woman was having a panic attack and asked specifically for the robot. Robin played songs by her favorite musician and videos of her favorite animal \u2014 Elvis Presley and puppies \u2014 until she had calmed down.<\/p>\n But with the Association of American Medical Colleges projecting that the U.S. will face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians in the next 11 years, Khachikyan\u2019s vision for Robin goes far beyond this type of support.<\/p>\n He said they\u2019re working to make the robot able to measure patients\u2019 vitals and check to see how they\u2019re doing and then send that information to their medical team. Longer term plans include designing Robin to help elderly patients change their clothes and go to the bathroom.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to design the next evolution of Robin; that Robin will take more and more responsibilities and become even more essential part of care delivery,\u201d Khachikyan said.<\/p>\n He clarified that it\u2019s not about replacing health care workers but about filling in the gaps in the workforce.<\/p>\n At UMass Memorial Children\u2019s, the robot is very much a part of a team of support for patients. When Luca needed an IV after not getting one in a while, Micaela Cotas, a certified child life specialist came in with the robot and showed him an IV and what was about to happen, and then Robin played a cartoon of it getting an IV put in.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just kind of helps show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer,\u201d Cotas said.<\/p>\n Finding its niche<\/p>\n Robin was developed by Khachikyan while he was getting his Ph.D. He said growing up in a single-parent household in Armenia had been lonely, so years later he wanted to build a type of robot that could act as a person\u2019s friend.<\/p>\n Developers tested it in a variety of industries before an investor suggested that pediatric hospitals would be a good fit because of the stress and loneliness children often feel.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was kind of an aha moment,\u201d he said. \u201cWe decided, OK let\u2019s try it.\u201d<\/p>\n