Tacoma General’s newest employee works 22 hours a day and says little beyond ‘meep-meep’

The singularity didn’t occur at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Tacoma General Hospital. But, perhaps it got a little bit closer.

That’s when Moxi, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning programmed robot, began its duties delivering medical supplies and carry samples to laboratories.

The singularity is a hypothesized moment sometime in our future when AI becomes self-aware and evolves beyond human control. Fortunately for the staff at Tacoma General, Moxi is not The Terminator. Think Rosey the Robot from “The Jetsons” but with a nursing cap instead of a maid’s apron.

The 5-foot-tall, 300-pound rolling ‘bot with blinking blue eyes spent a few minutes figuring out where it was Thursday when it went online and then began slowly rolling to a nursing station to start its day.

First day on the job

MultiCare will soon have five Moxis rolling the halls of both Tacoma General and Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. For its first duty, Moxi traveled over a sky bridge that connects TG with Mary Bridge and then used its single arm with a built-in security badge to activate an automatic door.

Yes, Moxi has a security clearance.

Once Moxi entered Mary Bridge it came to a stop at a nursing station where nursing assistant Stephanie Dacey used her badge to open one of the robot’s built-in drawers. She deposited some cleaning supplies as a test.

Nurses use kiosks in the hospital to request chores from one of the Moxis. They’re on the job 22 hours a day before they need to be recharged.

Nurses’ reactions

A passing nurse, Katie Schmidt, was wide-eyed as Moxi performed its task.

“I’m just taking it all in,” Schmidt said as she looked the robot over.

David Keepnews, executive director of the Washington State Nurses Association, said the group is not opposed to Moxi in principle.

“But we are concerned with MultiCare implementing new technologies without involving nurses,” he said. “Nurses need be at the table for decisions that involve them.”

The robots cannot replace nurses, he said.

Spokane trials

MultiCare has already rolled out the bots at its Deaconess Hospital in Spokane. The five (soon to be six) robots there, which have been active since January, have already saved nurses 4.92 million steps or 1,695 miles, according to Claudia Aime, MultiCare’s vice-president for nursing services.

Moxi is often referred to as a cobot. They are not meant to replace nurses but instead free people to spend more time caring for people.

“Moxi can go to the lab, can go to supply and pick up anything that is needed for patient care, which frees up our nurses to actually be next to the patients at the bedside and take care of their patients,” Aime said.

Robots are increasingly becoming a part of daily medicine. Hospitals routinely use UV light-emitting bots to cleanse rooms. Surgeons use robot arms for delicate surgeries.

Moxi represents a next step in robotics. It’s autonomous and requires little supervision. A video screen displays a queue of tasks its been assigned.

“Pickup going to 6 Olympic Medical Surgery Team 3,” one task read. Presumably, Moxi knew what that meant.

Construction

Moxi was built by Diligent Robotics but had its beginnings in a Georgia Tech robotics lab. The company spent about a month mapping out Tacoma General and Mary Bridge. Those maps are then uploaded into the Moxi bots when needed.

The thinking behind Moxi’s physical presence was to create a robot with vaguely human characteristics but stay out of the uncanny valley of too-human representations that can give people the creeps.

Moxi doesn’t converse with people other than a few “meep-meeps” and has a limited vocabulary.

“I’m here to pick something up,” Moxi said in a female voice Thursday.

Features

Moxi is full of cameras, much like a self-driving car, to help it navigate the hospital environment. Those cameras also connect to a remote operations center in Austin, Texas, where people monitor all the Moxis in use, much like air traffic control.

The robot has a headband that glows in various colors. Blue means status quo, purple means on the job, orange is used when it’s opening a door and red means it’s confused. Rainbow lights are displayed when it interacts with people, usually displaying heart-shaped eyes.

“The intent behind the head and the eyes and the headband is really to help communicate what Moxi is doing,” said Diligent’s Nicholas Bloom.

Moxi’s one arm has seven joints, allowing it to twist and bend to accommodate a variety of situations. While this Moxi hadn’t yet learned how to operate elevators on Thursday, its more learned cousins are able to enter and use elevators on their own.

And if the singularity does occur, Moxi has an emergency stop button. No need to call Arnold Schwarzenegger.