In hospitals across the US, patients and staff have grown accustomed to seeing a one-armed, four-foot high, friendly-looking white robot go about its business. Nurses greet Moxi – as the robot is called by its maker Diligent Robotics – with a "good morning", a high five or even a hug. Moxi might respond by displaying its heart-shaped LED eyes and a beep beep greeting of its own. But bringing Moxi into a hospital doesn't mean buying one outright. Instead, it is among robots available to rent or on a subscription basis – a model known as robotics-as-a-service.
"We get a lot of feedback that Moxi feels like a part of the team," says Todd Brugger, chief operating officer at the Texas-based company, which has around 100 of the wheeled robots in operation. The rental deal bundles service, maintenance and upgrades. A human engineer in a remote control room may be on hand to take control if needed. "It lowers the expense and the outlay for the hospital because you're not paying for the full purchase up front," Brugger says. "Secondly, and I think more importantly, this tech is evolving very quickly… we're routinely evolving the software and capabilities of the robot."
“Robots like hospital assistant Moxi are increasingly available to rent or on subscription, not just to buy.”
Robot rentals now span anything from a day to years for a variety of purposes, from Moxi's hospital deliveries to robot bartenders or autonomous weeders for farms. Increasingly this includes early humanoid models, designed to behave and look like humans and operate in environments built for people. Given humanoids are still a work-in-progress, they are currently rented out for clearly defined tasks – often entertainment. Depending on the model, a machine might dance, sing or serve guests at a wedding or corporate event.
Ethan Qi, a Beijing-based associate director at Counterpoint Research, explains that a humanoid dance routine is relatively simple to pull off. "You hire a real dancer to perform and video it. The video is then used to train the robot. Then the robot will know how to dance. But the engineer will still often go with the robot in case the environment or the platform isn't simple," he says.
Ambitions for humanoid rentals go beyond dance routines shared on social media, often in China. California-based 1X plans to start shipping its home helper robot NEO later this year. "Early access" customers in the US can either pay $20,000 (£15,000) outright for their own robot, or $499 (£378) per month on a subscription basis. As robotics technology races forward, renting may soon become the default – not just for hospitals and factories, but for the home.