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

I need to see room 21 for 20 minutes

And then you can come back and see Julia for another 10 more minutes

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

the field of robotics that designs robots to work with people. A robot program to imitate a 7-year-old girl is roaming hospitals and nursing homes

in an effort to bring comfort to patients. The Associated Press reports the robot named Robin uses artificial intelligence

to provide emotional support for children and adults while also helping to alleviate stress on medical staff

made worse by a shortage of workers. 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 that

engagement and connection to patients. Robin Botts are now at 30 medical facilities

from California to Massachusetts, helping people of all ages, a crucial component of her role

Primary goal of Robin to comfort patients during their stay in medical facilities and provide engagement entertainment emotional support One of the examples is a pediatric use case where kids are admitted for a long hospital stay

and they are experiencing different types of medical procedures and a lot of them are painful

So Robin is a companion that stays with them. The emotional support bot is only partially

autonomous with the rest operated by a team of support staff. But the ultimate goal is to have

her function on her own. She's currently capable of playing patients' favorite tunes, conversation

or a game of tic-tac-toe. Robin is also capable of catching on to emotions and will reflect a

patient's mood when interacting with them. She's even been known to lift spirits

Yeah, I think the patients definitely know who she is. You know, she takes turns in every patient's

room, you know, spending a little bit of time with them. And you can tell that the patients

when she enters the room, they light up because they know it's their turn. And efforts are reportedly underway for Robin to eventually take the vitals of patients

and relay it to the rest of the medical team. Researchers also say they plan to program her

to assist elderly patients with changing their clothes and bathroom visits. For more on this

story, download the Strader News app or visit san.com