Moxi during COVID-19 | MIT Technology Review
“ Life inside a covid-19 ward looks like this: tubes running through windows sucking out contaminated air, coronavirus patients lying inside “isopods” (plexiglass boxes placed over beds to prevent contamination), and nurses in goggles, caps, gloves, masks, and disposable gowns, cautiously administering medicine, providing care, and holding up iPads for family members not allowed in.
Here’s where Moxi steps in. So far, the health-care robot, which was already working at two hospitals in Texas before covid-19 hit, has been
delivering lab samples, intravenous pumps, medications, and protective gear during the pandemic. But it has not yet been put to work inside critical care, intensive care, or covid-19 units. The outbreak has compelled Moxi’s creators, Diligent Robots of Austin, Texas, to think about how it could help there too.
“If we can find ways for more dangerous activities to be automated, then we should.”
In May, Vivian Chu, one of the company’s founders, introduced me to her invention over a video call. Cloud-white, with a barrel-like torso, Moxi is a blend of cute and not too creepy. It has a camera on its moving head, which can turn, but not a neck-breaking 360 degrees, since that would feel weird to anyone watching. Its eyes are bursts of warm blue light—they can turn into softly glowing pink hearts at the right moment—and it rolls along on wheels, with a robotic arm that waves almost cheerfully to passersby. Moxi is very deliberately unimposing. As Chu, who is 5'4" (163 cm), talked to me from her company’s lab, she stood a few inches taller than the robot next to her, although she did explain that it can adjust its height, growing taller if a task requires.
For the most part, Moxi acts like a mechanical waiter. Inside its body, it can carry a tray of “lock tubes” that hold medications or supplies placed there by medical workers. Moxi’s headband turns red if it is locked, green if unlocked.
Moxi does not carry on conversations but makes adorable “meeps” while working, said Chu: “Very R2-D2. Different noises to convey if the robot is happy that it successfully delivered or upset because it opened something incorrectly.”
The designers put a lot of thought into creating a robot that is personable, like a teammate, Chu explained. Not too human-like, “but at the same time not like a toaster in the corner that you don’t care about.”
Chu and her cofounder, Andrea Thomaz, are experts in social robots, and their long-term vision has been to help frontline health-care workers. They’d already spent two and a half years with nurses—shadowing them, interviewing them, and watching them interact with patients. They saw how many nurses were being forced to run errands like fetching supplies and medicine instead of spending their time on face-to-face patient care.
Thomaz remembers one nursing assistant in Austin who set down her cup of coffee at the beginning of her shift and never touched it again, because she was so busy. “We would shadow them for entire shifts, and you realize 12 hours is a very long time to be on your feet,” she said.
When some medical staff realized that Thomaz and Chu were designing robots for hospitals, their first reaction was one of suspicion. “Wait, you want to develop a robot to do our job?” Thomaz recalls being asked.
“The robot can’t be a nurse. It’s not going to be a nurse,” says Chu. “But what it’s perfect for is going in and helping relieve the nurse that is so overburdened.”
When covid-19 overwhelmed hospitals in the states of Washington, New York, and New Jersey, “it really felt like a rallying call,” says Thomaz. “Nurses have always been a part of our mission. We just looked at each other like ‘Wow, they really need help more than ever.’”
“Oftentimes the nurse has to go in there just to hit a few buttons on a ventilator,” says Taylor. That requires wearing full protective gear, so some hospitals are running infusion pumps that they can operate from hallways outside patient rooms. Instead, says Taylor, a robot could go in.
Thomaz and Chu are now talking with hospitals about how robots could best help clinical staff, such as by performing riskier tasks in patient rooms or delivering lab samples. Robots could also take on cleaning and disinfecting. This would free up nurses for more important work like holding the hands of ill patients. “If we can find ways for more dangerous activities to be automated, then we should,” says Thomaz. “That’s what robots are for.”
Written by MIT Tech Review’s Erika Hayasaki
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