Robin the Robot: AI-Powered Companion Brings Comfort to Hospital Patients

A robot programmed to act like a 7-year-old girl works to combat fear and loneliness in hospitals

Days after Meagan Brazil-Sheehan's 6-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, they were walking down the halls of UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center when they ran into Robin the Robot. "Luca, how are you?" it asked in a high-pitched voice programmed to sound like a 7-year-old girl. "It's been awhile." 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. "His face lit up," she said about the interaction in June in Worcester, Massachusetts. "It was so special because she remembered him." Robin is an artificial intelligence -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. "Nurses and medical staff are really overworked, under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, a lot of times they don't have capacity to provide engagement and connection to patients," said Karen Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which developed the robot. "Robin helps to alleviate that part from them." As AI increasingly becomes a part of daily life, it's found a foothold in medical care -- providing everything from note-taking during exams to electronic nurses. While heralded by some for the efficiency it brings, others worry about its impact on patient care. 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're able to collect more data -- while still complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA -- and get closer to it being able to function independently. "Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We're trying to create that," he said, referencing the 2008 animated film. On a recent Friday, a staff member at HealthBridge Children's 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. 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 -- "No Fear" by DeJ Loaf -- 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. 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. "She brings joy to everyone," da Silva said. "She walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello." 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're sharing something difficult, its face reflects sadness and empathy. 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. 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 -- Elvis Presley and puppies -- until she had calmed down. 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's vision for Robin goes far beyond this type of support. He said they're working to make the robot able to measure patients' vitals and check to see how they're 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. "Our 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," Khachikyan said. He clarified that it's not about replacing health care workers but about filling in the gaps in the workforce. At UMass, 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. "It just kind of helps show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer," Cotas said. 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's friend. 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. "That was kind of an aha moment," he said. "We decided, OK let's try it." They had success introducing it at a pediatric hospital in Armenia and by 2020 launched a pilot program at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. Since Robin was created, its personality and character have changed significantly based on the responses from people it interacts with. Khachikyan gave the example of Robin's answer to the question: "What is your favorite animal." Initially they tried having the robot respond with dog. They also tried cat. But when they tried chicken, the children cracked up. So they stuck with it. "We created Robin's personality by really taking users into the equation," he said. "So we often say that Robin was designed by users." ___ Associated Press journalist Damian Dovarganes contributed to this report.

Hospitals Deploying Robot Programmed to Act Like Child to Comfort Pediatric Patients

A new face is lighting up hospitals and nursing homes across the country. It's an animated, cartoonish persona displayed on a digital screen roughly the size of an iPad, mounted on top of a robotic torso shaped like an elongated traffic cone. It slowly rolls around from place to place, cracking jokes with patients, making silly faces, and playing small games. Named Robin the Robot, it already seems to be a hit with its young patients -- and hospital staff. "She brings joy to everyone," Samantha da Silva, a speech language pathologist at HealthBridge Children's Hospital in Orange County, California, told the Associated Press. "She walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello." Designed to behave and sound like a seven-year-old girl, the therapeutic robot is the latest example of how AI models are making their way into medical applications. Some hospitals are using AI to triage patients, including by having a chatbot interview them before they start a virtual telehealth appointment. Doctors are also using AI tools to transcribe medical visits and help diagnose patients. In each of these applications, the tech has shown it can go horribly wrong. But Robin the Robot is different. Its main goal is to offer companionship and comfort -- a noble goal, but a role of AI models that's under the microscope right now as more people, especially children, are reported to suffer delusions and spiral into mental crises after forming a close relationship with chatbots like ChatGPT. "Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We're trying to create that," Karén Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which built Robin, told the AP. According to the company, Robin is powered by its proprietary CompassionateAI™, which is designed to "address the unique needs of children and older adults." It can form "meaningful" and "enduring" relationships, they say. That said, the robot is only about 30 percent autonomous, according to the AP. The rest is handled by a team of remote teleoperators -- a common wrinkle for AI systems, especially for embodied applications ranging from humanoid robots to self-driving cars. It collects data from each of its interactions, which Khachikyan insists is compliant with HIPAA. Kids seem to love it. When the robot played the favorite song of a teenager injured in a car accident, the young patient danced along. Elsewhere, it made a little girl laugh by putting on silly glasses and a big red nose. With another patient, it played tic-tac-toe. But there are sides of the bot that sound like some of the dangers that critics warn can arise from the tech being too familiar and personable. According to Khachikyan, the robot mirrors the emotions of the person it's talking with. It'll laugh along if a patient is in a good mood, and put on a sad and empathetic disposition if they're going through something tough. The bot will also recognize and "remember" patients (though how much of this is attributable to human operation is unclear.) One mother recalled how her six-year-old son was delighted when he met the bot for the second time. Robin greeted him by name. "His face lit up," Meagan Brazil-Sheehan, the mother, told the AP. "It was so special because she remembered him." These features make sense, given that the bot is supposed to be a comforting presence. It does, however, raise the common criticism of AI models being too sycophantic, constantly validating an interlocutor's feelings instead of ever challenging them. Therapists have warned how these sycophantic conversations can quickly worsen someone's mental health, instead of guiding them to a healthier space. In particular, an AI chatbot's ability to "remember" details from previous conversations has been criticized for creating a dangerously anthropomorphized impression of the tech. Since launching in the US five years ago, Robin has been deployed at 30 different healthcare facilities in California, New York, Massachusetts, and Indiana, according to the reporting. Khachikyan says it's helping alleviate overworked nurses and medical staff who don't always have the time to connect to patients. But if the robot is still mostly remotely operated by a human, it's worth asking how efficient a form of reinforcement it will be. Is this ultimately just a dressed up way of outsourcing a key role in a hospital, where instead of on-site staff providing support, it's someone in a tech company's office however many miles away? And how will the robot be received when we reach a point where it's no longer novel to see the devices used in these settings? Those questions aren't slowing down Robin's creators. "Our 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," Khachikyan said.

Hospitals are leaning on an AI-powered therapy robot programmed to act like a little 7-year-old girl | Fortune

Days after Meagan Brazil-Sheehan's 6-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, they were walking down the halls of UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center when they ran into Robin the Robot. "Luca, how are you?" it asked in a high-pitched voice programmed to sound like a 7-year-old girl. "It's been awhile." 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. "His face lit up," she said about the interaction in June in Worcester, Massachusetts. "It was so special because she remembered him." Robin is an artificial intelligence-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. "Nurses and medical staff are really overworked, under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, a lot of times they don't have capacity to provide engagement and connection to patients," said Karen Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which developed the robot. "Robin helps to alleviate that part from them." As AI increasingly becomes a part of daily life, it's found a foothold in medical care -- providing everything from note-taking during exams to electronic nurses. While heralded by some for the efficiency it brings, others worry about its impact on patient care. 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're able to collect more data -- while still complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA -- and get closer to it being able to function independently. "Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We're trying to create that," he said, referencing the 2008 animated film. On a recent Friday, a staff member at HealthBridge Children's 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. 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 -- "No Fear" by DeJ Loaf -- 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. 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. "She brings joy to everyone," da Silva said. "She walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello." 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're sharing something difficult, its face reflects sadness and empathy. 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. 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 -- Elvis Presley and puppies -- until she had calmed down. 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's vision for Robin goes far beyond this type of support. He said they're working to make the robot able to measure patients' vitals and check to see how they're 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. "Our 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," Khachikyan said. He clarified that it's not about replacing health care workers but about filling in the gaps in the workforce. At UMass Memorial Children's, 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. "It just kind of helps show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer," Cotas said. 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's friend. 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. "That was kind of an aha moment," he said. "We decided, OK let's try it." They had success introducing it at a pediatric hospital in Armenia and by 2020 launched a pilot program at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. Since Robin was created, its personality and character have changed significantly based on the responses from people it interacts with. Khachikyan gave the example of Robin's answer to the question: "What is your favorite animal." Initially they tried having the robot respond with dog. They also tried cat. But when they tried chicken, the children cracked up. So they stuck with it. "We created Robin's personality by really taking users into the equation," he said. "So we often say that Robin was designed by users." Associated Press journalist Damian Dovarganes contributed to this report.

Could robots provide emotional support to children in hospitals?

Health facilities in the US are turning to robots to comfort young and elderly patients alike. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes part of everyday life, it is also finding a role in health care. At a children's hospital in the US state of Massachusetts, a therapeutic robot named Robin roams the wards, checking in on young patients. Standing 1.2 metres tall, Robin has a sleek, white, triangular body that was designed, its developers say, for hugging. "Luca, how are you? It's been a while," Robin asked a six-year-old boy with leukaemia that the robot had met once before when it spotted him in the corridor. Robin is designed to act and sound like a 7-year-old girl. Its developers say it can provide emotional support for children in long-term care, who are often facing painful procedures. "The primary goal of Robin is to comfort patients during their stay in medical facilities and provide engagement, entertainment, and emotional support," said Karén Khachikyan, Expper Technologies's chief executive. "Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We're trying to create that," Khachikyan added, referencing the 2008 animated film. When Luca needed an IV line, child life specialist Micaela Cotas brought Robin into the hospital room. Cotas showed him the equipment and explained what was about to happen. Then Robin played a cartoon of itself having an IV put in. "It helps [to] show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer," Cotas said. The robot has been part of the care team at UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center since 2020. Five years after its launch in the United States, Robin is now a familiar presence in around 30 health care facilities in California, Massachusetts, New York, and Indiana. It has also been introduced in elderly care, where its developers say it acts like a grandchild. In nursing homes, Robin plays memory games with people living with dementia, guides them through breathing exercises, and offers companionship. Khachikyan recalled an instance last year when Robin calmed a woman at a Los Angeles care facility who was suffering a panic attack by playing Elvis Presley songs and videos of puppies, reminding her of her favourites. The robot is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) but is not yet fully autonomous. Most of the time, remote operators control it under the watchful eyes of clinical staff. It performs about 30 per cent of its tasks autonomously and is gathering data, such as recordings of interaction with patients. Each interaction generates data that developers say is collected in line with US health privacy laws, helping the robot get closer to functioning independently. Expper Technologies stresses that Robin is not intended to replace staff, but to support them and help ease workforce shortages. Short staffing in healthcare systems is a global issue and hospitals in Europe are also looking into hiring robot assistants. During health care workers' strikes in 2023, the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) looked into deploying helper robots at the country's hospitals to help ease the burden on staff. Future developments include enabling Robin to measure patients' vital signs and share the information with medical teams, according to Expper Technologies. Longer-term plans involve designing the robot to help elderly people with daily tasks such as dressing and using the bathroom.