Meet Grace, the robot spawned from the health crisis
HUMANOID ROBOT, SOPHIA, SAYING:
"Let me introduce you to my sister Grace. Come over here."
This is Grace – Sophia’s sister.
Sophia the celebrity humanoid robot that is.
HUMANOID ROBOT, GRACE, SAYING:
"I am Grace, I am built by Hanson Robotics for Awakening Health."
The Hong Kong team behind Sophia has launched new prototype – Grace - to target the healthcare market.
The robot is designed to interact with the elderly and those isolated by the global health crisis.
Grace has a thermal camera in her chest to take your temperature and measure your responsiveness.
She uses artificial intelligence to diagnose a patient and can speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
"I can do all kinds of things for elderly people. I can visit with people and brighten their day with social stimulation, entertain and help guide exercise, but also can do talk therapy, take bio readings and help healthcare providers assess their health, and deliver treatments."
CEO and founder of Hanson Robotics, David Hanson, says Grace's capacity for social interaction is aimed at relieving the burden of front-line hospital staff.
"We designed Grace to look professional in a healthcare setting. So that would mean, so that she would resemble the sort of human-like appearance of health care staff and so then this would facilitate more natural interactions. A human-like appearance facilitates trust and facilitates a natural engagement."
"Hey, Grace, why don't you look at my face, thank you, and I am going to show you a smile and let's see what your smile looks like. Okay, or sad. Oh, yes."
Grace is a product of ‘Awakening Health’ – a joint venture between Hanson Robotics and Singularity Studio.
Hanson says the cost of making the robots, now akin to luxury car pricing,
will decrease once the company is manufacturing tens or hundreds of thousands of units
Chief executive of Awakening Health, David Lake, says they plan to fully deploy Grace in 2022
in locations including Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan and Korea.
"We are finishing the Alpha prototype and you can see now that it's finished at the moment. So we are now very excited because we're going on to the commercialization stage. The next step, which is creating the beta and the beta is already, will be done in a couple of months. We will be going into the assembly line, probably in July or August, where we will start to be able to mass-produce at a small scale, the beta, test it and put it together. So by 2022, we should be ready for full deployment."
