{"id":5383,"date":"2025-09-22T19:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/hospitals-child-robot-comfort-kids\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T19:00:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:00:29","slug":"hospitals-child-robot-comfort-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/hospitals-child-robot-comfort-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitals Deploying Robot Programmed to Act Like Child to Comfort Pediatric Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A new face is lighting up hospitals and nursing homes across the country.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Named Robin the Robot, it already seems to be a hit with its young patients \u2014 and hospital staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe brings joy to everyone,\u201d Samantha da Silva, a speech language pathologist at HealthBridge Children\u2019s Hospital in Orange County, California, told the Associated Press<\/em><\/a>. \u201cShe walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Robin the Robot is different. Its main goal is to offer companionship and comfort \u2014 a noble goal, but <\/strong>a role of AI models that\u2019s under the microscope right now as more people, especially children<\/a>, are reported to suffer delusions and spiral into mental crises<\/a> after forming a close relationship with chatbots like ChatGPT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We\u2019re trying to create that,\u201d Kar\u00e9n Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which built Robin, told the <\/strong>AP<\/em>.<\/p>\n

According to the company, Robin is powered by its proprietary CompassionateAI\"\u2122\", which is designed to \u201caddress the unique needs of children and older adults.\u201d It can form \u201cmeaningful\u201d and \u201cenduring\u201d relationships, they say.<\/p>\n

That said, the robot is only about 30 percent autonomous, according to the AP<\/em>. The rest is handled by a team of remote teleoperators \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But there are sides of the bot that sound like some of the dangers that critics warn can arise from <\/strong>the tech being too familiar and personable.<\/p>\n

According to Khachikyan, the robot mirrors the emotions of the person it\u2019s talking with. It\u2019ll laugh along if a patient is in a good mood, and put on a sad and empathetic disposition if they\u2019re going through something tough.<\/p>\n

The bot will also recognize and \u201cremember\u201d patients (though how much of this is attributable to human operation is unclear.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis face lit up,\u201d Meagan Brazil-Sheehan, the mother, told the <\/strong>AP<\/em>. \u201cIt was so special because she remembered him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s feelings instead of ever challenging them. Therapists have warned how these sycophantic conversations can quickly worsen someone\u2019s mental health<\/a>, instead of guiding them to a healthier space. In particular, an AI chatbot\u2019s ability to \u201cremember\u201d details from previous conversations<\/a> has been criticized for creating a dangerously anthropomorphized impression of the tech.<\/p>\n

Since launching in the US five years ago, Robin <\/strong>has been deployed at 30 different healthcare facilities in California, New York, Massachusetts, and Indiana, according to the reporting. Khachikyan says it\u2019s helping alleviate overworked nurses and medical staff who don\u2019t always have the time to connect to patients.<\/p>\n

But if the robot is still mostly remotely operated by a human, it\u2019s 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\u2019s someone in a tech company\u2019s office however many miles away? And how will the robot be received when we reach a point where it\u2019s no longer novel to see the devices used in these settings?<\/p>\n

Those questions aren\u2019t slowing down Robin\u2019s creators.<\/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

More on AI:<\/strong> Alarming New Video Shows Robot Making Incredibly Realistic Facial Expressions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The post Hospitals Deploying Robot Programmed to Act Like Child to Comfort Pediatric Patients<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new face is lighting up hospitals and nursing homes across the country. It\u2019s an animated, cartoonish persona displayed on a digital screen roughly the size of an iPad, mounted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3843,3841,3844,2700,3845],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-developments","category-ethics","category-health-medicine","category-robotics","category-robots-and-machines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}