In hospitals across the US, patients and staff have grown accustomed to a one-armed, four-foot-high white robot gliding through corridors, shuttling medical supplies. Nurses greet Moxi – as the robot is called by its maker Diligent Robotics – with a “good morning”, a high five or even a hug. The machine responds by displaying heart-shaped LED eyes and a beep beep greeting. “We get a lot of feedback that Moxi feels like a part of the team,” says Todd Brugger, chief operating officer of the Texas-based company, which now has around 100 of the wheeled robots in operation.
But hospitals don’t buy Moxi outright. Instead, they rent it on a subscription basis under what the industry calls robotics-as-a-service. The deal bundles the robot itself with service, maintenance and upgrades, and a human engineer in a remote control room may take over if needed. “It lowers the expense and the outlay for the hospital because you’re not paying for the full purchase up front,” Brugger explains. “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 Moxi and NEO are available on subscription, lowering upfront costs and keeping pace with rapid tech changes.”
The rental model is spreading to everything from robot bartenders and autonomous weeders for farms to early humanoid models designed to behave and look like humans. These humanoids are still a work-in-progress, so they are rented for clearly defined tasks – often entertainment. A machine might dance, sing or serve guests at a wedding or corporate event.
Ethan Qi, a Beijing-based associate director at Counterpoint Research, says pulling off a humanoid dance routine is relatively simple. “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.”
Beyond dance routines, ambitions stretch to a robot housekeeper subscription. 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 technology races forward, renting may be the only sensible way to keep up.