How Robin, the robotic companion, keeps patients calm during hospital visits

Robin is designed to support healthcare teams and patients. | Source: Expper Technologies

Every day, staffers in pediatrics hospitals and nursing home are doing everything they can to keep their patients calm and cooperative. In around 30 hospitals, dental clinics, and adult care facilities, this work is aided by Robin, a mobile robot from Expper Technologies.

Robin is a socially assistive robot that aims to enhance the emotional well-being of the people it interacts with. The robot is kid-sized, with a friendly face and a simply designed body. It moves around using a wheeled base and doesn’t have any arms or manipulators. The system does all of its interaction with the world through its speech.

Glendale, Calif.-based Expper has developed a fictional backstory and distinct personality behind Robin. Davit Martirosyan, the co-founder and head of engineering at Expper, described the robot as a kid who’s very interested in doing different things and very open to learning new things.

“Robin came from the universe to Earth, and it always wants to go back to the universe, see what it can see there, but it’s impossible for him,” Martirosyan told The Robot Report . “So, that means Robin has a dream, and he wants to know everyone, to meet everyone, become friends with everyone.”

As a founder of Expper, Martirosyan has always been intimately familiar with Robin. But now, the therapeutic system is with him in his home. This means he is experiencing the technology both as an engineer and as part of his everyday life.

Expper started in 2019 and sold its first robots in early 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic started to shut things down.

“We sold our first robot here in LA to a dental clinic, and we started to build that robot remotely. Imagine, it’s a hardware product,” Martirosyan. “We built [the robot] in one apartment. The software was in another apartment. Then in another apartment, we did tests on this robot.”

The team was able to balance this spread out work and get its first system, another robot for UCLA Children’s Hospital, out into the world. During this time, the hospital did a pilot and research on how robots help kids handle anxiety in healthcare settings.

Expper found that the pandemic was both a drawback and an opportunity. One one hand, it posed logistical challenges to building the robot.

On the other hand, children who found themselves in the hospital during COVID were often separated from their families. This meant that they could benefit more from Robin’s presence.

Robin can be deployed across hospitals, dental clinics, and eldercare homes, so its job can vary. Dental clinics are some of the robot’s simpler deployments, according to Expper.