{"id":248844,"date":"2021-05-13T18:37:11","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T15:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/an-automated-box-on-wheels-with-personality\/"},"modified":"2021-05-13T18:37:11","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T15:37:11","slug":"an-automated-box-on-wheels-with-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/an-automated-box-on-wheels-with-personality\/","title":{"rendered":"#An automated box on wheels\u2014with personality"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#An automated box on wheels\u2014with personality<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n This rectangular box on wheels is a robot that transports trolleys around the hospital. Surprisingly, when people hear it talk, they see it as a kind of funny animal-like creature \u2014 and not really a robot. Credit: Roger S\u00f8raa\/NTNU
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Robots are becoming more and more omnipresent in our lives, even though we may not notice. New research shows that when a boxy motorized hospital robot can talk, people find it funny and engaging. And that may help people be more willing to accept new technologies, like robots, in their everyday lives.<\/p>\n

No one expected the “Automated Guided Vehicles” at St. Olavs Hospital to have personalities. These motorized units, like long boxes on wheels, are merely meant to transport garbage, medical equipment or food from one part of the hospital to another. But because they have to interact with humans, by warning them to get out of the way, they have to talk.<\/p>\n

And that’s when the fun began.<\/p>\n

Instead of using a generic Norwegian voice, they decided to give the hospital robots a voice that used the strong, distinctive local dialect. Suddenly these stainless-steel boxes, rolling around the hospital to transport goods, had a personality.<\/p>\n

They were kind of pushy. A little rude, really. But fun.<\/p>\n

Children with long-term illnesses who were attending school in the hospital during their treatments were given an assignment to find and identify them. One parent with a gravely ill child found solace in the robots’ endless, somewhat mindless battles as they unsuccessfully ordered inanimate objects\u2014like walls\u2014to get out of the way.<\/p>\n

In a new study, NTNU researchers examine just how the robots came to be seen as friendly, animal like creatures\u2014and why that matters.<\/p>\n

“We found that these robots, which were not created to be social<\/a> robots, were actually given social qualities by the humans relating to them,” said Roger A. S\u00f8raa, a researcher at NTNU’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science<\/a>, and first author of the new study. “We tend to anthropomorphize technologies like robots\u2014giving them humanlike personalities\u2014so we can put them into a context that we’re more comfortable with.”<\/p>\n

Twenty-one robots driving around hospital halls<\/b><\/p>\n

Health care, especially in hospitals, involves lots of specialized skills and expertise. Whether it’s nurses administering to patients around the clock, or doctors providing critical surgery or other highly specialized care, there’s plenty of work for people to do in a hospital setting.<\/p>\n

So why not leave some of the more mundane work\u2014say, moving food from the cafeteria to different hospital units, or bringing clean linens to nursing stations\u2014to an automated industrial robot?
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“These are types of jobs that can often be dull, dirty or dangerous, or what we call 3D jobs,” S\u00f8raa said. “These are jobs that humans don’t necessarily want to do or like to do. And those are the jobs we are seeing becoming robotized or digitalized the fastest.”<\/p>\n

That’s exactly what St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim decided in 2006, when they brought 21 AGVs, made by Swisslog Healthcare, into the hospital to do some very basic lifting and moving work. St. Olavs was the first hospital in Scandinavia to adopt this technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, the robots have been driving around the hospital’s halls, following pre-defined routes among different pick-up and delivery points, using lasers to navigate. They also have sensors that enable them to avoid people, obstacles and dangerous situations. They even take elevators\u2014much to the annoyance of hospital staff\u2014but more about this later.<\/p>\n


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