Can A Robot Nurse Bring Us Closer To The Original AI Dream?

A new humanoid robot designed by Awakening Health, a joint venture between SingularityNET and Hanson Robotics, promises to revolutionise healthcare and provide care and companionship for elderly patients. Aptly named Grace, our robot nurse combines the precision of advanced robotics for processing and gathering accurate data in real time, with the empathy and compassion that, traditionally, only the human touch can offer. She can recognise and respond to seven human emotions, speaks fluent English and Korean, and can mirror her interlocutor’s facial expressions. In some meaningful ways, she is the most empathetic humanoids ever created.

Grace has been designed as a companion for elderly patients in care facilities. Her main function is relieving loneliness and improving the patients’ mental health by interacting with them and providing a variety of uplifting activities, such as talking therapies and guided meditation. For example, she can listen to senior citizens’ life stories, record them, and report them back to others, or she can help patients get in touch with their families digitally.

Grace can also perform basic health checks like monitoring a patient’s temperature, pulse and blood pressure, and relay this back to their healthcare provider. Her advanced AI systems will also assist doctors and nurses in making more accurate diagnoses, for what concerns neurodegenerative disease.