Monday, December 17, 2007

Robo nurses: iRobot, others prepare health-care robots

By Ryan McBride

IRobot Corp. has sold folks on using its robots to vacuum homes, scrub pools and wash floors. But could consumers warm to the idea of using one of its robots to take care of grandma?

The Burlington-based company has developed a prototype of an "elder care" robot named "CiCi," which was briefly on display at a medical devices event in Boston last month. Yet it's unclear when (or whether) CiCi would join iRobot's vacuuming Roomba and floor-washing Scooba robots on the market because company officials are keeping a tight lid on the project.

That stealthy product is the latest example of the growing interest among companies, physicians and researchers to use robotics to help cure the ills plaguing home health care. And a market for such robots could develop as agencies continue battling health-care worker shortages, as technology advances, and if prices drop, industry watchers say.

IRobot declined several requests for interviews about its elderly care robot, saying it is "not yet ready to comment on CiCi," according to company spokeswoman Leah Taylor, in an e-mail. The company did, however, offer information on its virtual visiting robot called "ConnectR," which Taylor said may have utility in watching over patients.

Robotics experts from outside the company had some knowledge of CiCi.

Nevan Hanumara, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT, said the robot has audio features that can be used to check on elderly patients at home and would be linked to a network to alert clinicians elsewhere of a medical problem.

"The CiCi still very much looks like a proof of concept," said Hanumara, who helped design a robot to perform lung biopsies that won MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition in May 2007.

The CiCi prototype, which was on display at a conference hosted by Boston's Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology last month, stood about the size of a desktop computer and was the shape of a human upper body without arms.

Cory Kidd, of the Personal Robotics Group at the MIT Media Lab, said he has known about the CiCi prototype for the past couple of years but believes iRobot may have no plans to commercialize it. He has his own ambitions in medical robotics, however. Kidd has founded a Cambridge startup called Intuitive Automata Inc. to commercialize a robot he has developed to help people lose weight. The firm's prototypes have a camera to recognize people and talk to them about their diets. The firm is working on a commercial version of the robot.

Though iRobot declined to comment for this story, company CEO Colin Angle told Mass High Tech in a 2006 interview that his industry was about three years from introducing a medical robot for home health care. He noted then that the challenge would be to get the retail price of such robots below $1,000.

The high cost of robotics has deterred Partners HealthCare System from testing the technology in patients' homes, said Joseph Kvedar, director of Partners' Center for Connected Health, the telemedicine arm of the Boston-based hospital manager.

Kvedar said his group has been in touch with iRobot about the home health care market, yet he did not provide details. "Marrying the use of robotics for home health care with the corporate expertise that brought us the Roomba is quite exciting," he said.

IRobot, which reported revenue of $150.3 million for the first nine months of 2007, has already launched six robots for the home market. One of its latest, the ConnectR, is the closest it has come to a home-companion robot.

The ConnectR, which iRobot expects to begin selling for less than $500 each in 2008, has a mobile platform with voice and video capabilities that users can control remotely via an Internet connection. The robot could be used to keep an eye on patients in their homes, but iRobot has not marketed it for that specific use.

Other companies working to develop personal or health-care robots include Amherst, N.H.-based MobileRobots Inc., whose executives say commercial customers for its task-master robots -- which cost $30,000 or more -- include hospitals. And robotics startup North End Technologies LLC, of Nashua, N.H., wants to hit the consumer market with an undisclosed robot.

Meantime, MIT's Kidd said, the only robot now marketed to consumers for home health care is a furry robotic seal, called "Paro," developed in Japan.

"I think we're quite a few years from having Rosie the robot," said Kidd, referring to the cyber-maid from "The Jetsons" cartoon, "but what I see is that every year we are going to see increases in what (robots) can do for us."