In hospitals across the US, a one-armed, four-foot-high white robot called Moxi has become a familiar sight. Nurses greet it with a "good morning", a high five, or even a hug. Moxi responds by displaying heart-shaped LED eyes and a beep-beep greeting of its own. "We get a lot of feedback that Moxi feels like a part of the team," says Todd Brugger, chief operating officer of Texas-based Diligent Robotics, the company that makes it.
But hospitals don’t buy Moxi outright. Instead, they rent it — part of a trend known as robotics-as-a-service. Service, maintenance and upgrades are bundled into the deal, and a human engineer in a remote control room can 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," says Brugger. "Secondly, and I think more importantly, this tech is evolving very quickly… we’re routinely evolving the software and capabilities of the robot."
“US hospitals rent Moxi robots, part of a growing robotics-as-a-service trend offering flexibility as tech evolves rapidly.”
Diligent has around 100 of the wheeled robots in operation. But Moxi is just one example. Robot rentals now cover everything from bartenders to autonomous farm weeders, and increasingly include early humanoid models designed to behave and look like humans. Since humanoids are still a work-in-progress, they are typically rented for clearly defined tasks — entertainment. A machine might dance, sing, or serve guests at weddings or corporate events.
Ethan Qi, a Beijing-based associate director at Counterpoint Research, explains how a humanoid learns to dance: "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."
Ambitions go beyond dance routines shared on social media. California-based 1X plans to ship its home helper robot NEO later this year. "Early access" customers in the US can either pay $20,000 outright for their own robot, or $499 per month on a subscription basis.
As robotics technology accelerates, renting may become the norm — a way to stay current without betting on hardware that could be obsolete next year.