In hospitals across the US, patients and staff have grown accustomed to a one-armed, four-foot-high white robot gliding through the corridors. Nurses greet Moxi – as the machine is called by its maker Diligent Robotics – with a “good morning”, a high five or even a hug. The robot, which shuttles medical supplies, might respond 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 the Texas-based firm, which has around 100 of the wheeled robots in operation. But hospitals do not have to buy Moxi outright; instead, they can rent it or subscribe to what the industry calls robotics-as-a-service.
“Robots like Moxi are now available to rent on subscription, lowering costs and keeping pace with fast-evolving tech.”
Under such deals, service, maintenance and upgrades are bundled into the monthly fee, 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,” 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.”
The rental model is spreading far beyond hospital deliveries. Robots can now be leased for a day or years for anything from bartending to autonomous weeding on farms. Increasingly, this includes early humanoid models designed to look and behave like people, and to operate in environments built for humans.
Because humanoids are still a work in progress, they are 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 how a humanoid learns a dance routine: “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 for rental humanoids go beyond the dance routines shared on social media, often from 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 or subscribe for $499 (£378) per month.
The subscription model could accelerate adoption of automation, allowing businesses to keep pace with rapidly changing technology without heavy upfront costs. As robots become cheaper to rent than to buy, the question may shift from whether to automate to how quickly – and what jobs humans will be left to do.