Pepper the Robot Joins Staff at Townsville Hospital

Townsville Hospital has a new recruit thanks to a joint project with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Robotic Vision at QUT, James Cook University, and the Queensland Government. “Pepper” is the first humanoid social robot being trialled in an Australian acute clinical setting.

Pepper is lighting up the hospital experience but the humanoid social robot is not just there for novelty. Pepper has been programmed to provide patients with information about the hospital, acting as a concierge in the hospital’s short stay unit.

Judy Morton, Executive Director Nursing and Midwifery said, “Pepper is a moving, talking robot with 20 motors inside and is programmed to provide vital patient information”.

“Patients or hospital visitors can ask Pepper a question and they will get a response. Pepper can hear and see and uses body language to help communicate”.

What are the benefits?

In the hospital setting, staff spend a substantial amount of time answering simple questions from patients. For Ms Morton, Pepper is another way for patients to get information. Just like nursing staff, Pepper tracks faces and turns towards voices, giving the impression that she’s engaging with people in a human way.

This interaction should only get better, with nursing staff and patients using the trial as a way to advise the robot programmers on how to tweak it. Nursing staff (the ones who care and work in the health service) and patients (the ones living the experience) know better than anyone how a concierge robot should work.

As Project Leader, QUT, Belinda Ward, said, “You don’t want robots that are in hospitals being programmed by robotic engineers”.

So far Pepper can:

• Answer questions about what a patient can do if they are feeling unwell
• Answer questions about smoking
• Provide advice on where to park, where to eat and where to get a coffee
• Greet, guide, engage and entertain patients
• Be a novel form of interaction to delight and lift the spirits of patients

After a month in the short stay unit Pepper will be relocated to The Townsville Hospital main foyer and provide information to patients and visitors on influenza vaccination. Pepper will be at The Townsville Hospital for a total of five months.

Want to see an interview with Pepper? Check out this video.

Image: YouTube