Paging Dr. Robot: Aethon's Autonomous Hospital Helpers

Though anthropomorphic, walking-and-talking robots get all the press and praise, it's the robots behind the scenes that keep human civilization humming. These unsung heroes are the bots that drive rivets, screw on bottle caps, remove spent fuel rods at nuclear power plants, and yes, even deliver medication at hospitals. If you paused on that last one, then you probably haven't seen a TUG robot rolling down the hallways of your local medical facility.

The TUG robot, and the company that makes it—Aethon—is the creation of a group of engineers and a man, Aethon CEO Aldo Zini, who saw the robot's potential as a high-tech hospital worker that could move medicine, food, test samples, and even laundry from floor to floor quickly, effectively, and autonomously.

What TUG Does
Simply put, the TUG is a transporter, taking items from here to there inside a hospital—items as precious as cancer drugs that cost thousands of dollars per pill, as noxious as medical waste, as delicious (hmm) as trays of meals, and as cumbersome as 200 pounds of laundry. Hospital staff deploy the TUG units from a touch screen at their "bay" where they are stored, waiting in their charging stations. (They can also be summoned and tracked via a Web interface.) Once the items are loaded into the cart and secured, the TUG unit is off on its journey, riding elevators, navigating hallways—careful not to bump into walls, patients, or nurses speed-walking on their rounds. They perform a necessary function, a function that used to pull valuable doctors, nurses, and researchers away from their primary duties, wasting untold man hours.

The Tech Inside TUG
The main part of a TUG unit is essentially a motorized autonomous robot mounted to a secured cart. Physically a TUG looks like a granddaddy Roomba, measuring 7.25 by 20 inches (HW) and weighing 55 pounds. Its body is made of high-impact, abrasion-resistant ABS plastic. It is driven by two 24 VDC (volts of direct current) motors and four standard 12-volt lead-acid batteries.

TUG can detect people and objects using a matrix of "light whiskers" that employ sonar, infrared, and laser technologies. Its onboard computer (with custom-made motherboards and Intel processors) stores an AutoCAD map of the hospital to help it get around. In terms of securing TUG's payload and the robots themselves, Zini says that the robots are more safe and reliable than human messengers. The cabinet on a TUG unit requires thumbprint identification and a key code to get inside. The robots are monitored 24-7 with onboard cameras. If anyone tried to remove a TUG from the hospital, it would immediately trigger an alarm.

Aethon Background
Based in Pittsburgh, Aethon is a privately-held company with 65 employees. Though Aethon started in 2001, Zini says the company didn't really get going until 2004. The idea for the device, according to Zini, "came from a robotic engineer who co-founded the company. The idea was to develop a simple and mobile robot." When Zini came into the picture, he immediately saw its potential in the health care industry. "I decided we needed to turn this idea into a business and a product." So far, that product has been a success, being used in more than 100 hospitals across the country.

In terms of the challenges Aethon's engineers faced when building the TUG, getting it to use elevators unassisted proved a particularly daunting challenge. "Every elevator in the world is different, even [those] in the same building," Zini says. "It's a very convoluted industry with old technology interwoven with new technology." Thus, Aethon had to develop its own universal software that could operate any elevator in the world—no easy task, Zini adds. "What we thought would take a couple months ended up taking a couple years."

Does TUG Replace People?
As with any robotic technology that automates tasks formerly performed by humans, TUG had its share of critics. Zini says that initially, a number of hospitals' staff was opposed to the idea of the robots because they thought it would eliminate jobs. But Zini points out that "most of the jobs the robots do are jobs people don't want to do and that hospitals have a hard time finding people to do. Hospitals have a heck of a time finding people to collect dirty trays after meals." And some applications are just too laborious for humans, such as hauling hundreds of pounds of trash or laundry.

TUG robots can also result in cost-savings for hospitals, which can prevent drastic budget cuts (and possible job eliminations) at some facilities. For example, when El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA was building a new campus in 2009, it wanted to use the opportunity to incorporate many technologies throughout the facility, including a robust wireless infrastructure. According to Ken King of El Camino's Chief Administrative Services, TUG robots were brought into the new facility in part as a cost-saving measure. TUG robots can be leased for $1,200 to $2,000 a month, with the average price coming in at about $1,500 a month per unit, according to Zini.

Making TUG Better
Although Zini doesn't see the core mission of Aethon or the primary function of TUG robots changing anytime soon, he does see some improvements on the horizon. For example, Aethon just added an online delivery-tracking feature to TUG units called MedEx, because of its similarity to how FedEx tracks packages. And the company has greatly cut the time it takes to map a facility using CAD drawings.

"What used to take us two weeks now takes us three days; we're now working to cut that to three hours."

Zini also envisions a day when TUG robots could load and unload themselves. Finally, a more behind-the-scenes innovation would be to find ways to cut manufacturing costs, which could boost profits and possibly lower the cost of TUG units to end users.

In the end, King says the big picture on TUG robots is being able to provide better care to patients—even in tough economic times.

"The number-one thing going on across the country in healthcare is reducing cost," King says. "Anything we can do to bring costs down allows us to put more money at the bedside. So we use technology to increase the quality and safety of care. And the robots help us do that."