Robots Have Been Shielding Doctors And Nurses From Covid-19
Milagrow’s Humanoid helps disinfect the premises, allows doctors to monitor contagious patients, and indulges in conversations with isolated patients.
Founded in 2007 as Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions by Rajeev Karwal, it was not until 2011 since the company forayed into AI Robotics. A huge success in the segment had Milagrow providing robots for facility management, hospitality, education, healthcare, retail as well as banking. Milagrow has also been actively involved in providing robots to battle the ongoing pandemic. The company has a manufacturing base in India that builds Milagrow Humanoid ELF.
To delve further into this, Rajeev Karwal, CEO and founder of Milagrow Human Tech, speaks to Express Computer about their recent projects and the future of robotics.
- Please share with us how your robots have been deployed in AIIMS Delhi and what are their functions?
As India’s healthcare system grapples with increasing cases of COVID-19, Milagrow announced its efforts with AIIMS, Delhi to help contain the spread of the pandemic amongst doctors and healthcare workers. Under this effort its advanced AI-powered robots – Milagrow iMap 9 and Humanoid ELF –being tested in the advanced COVID-19 ward at AIIMS, Delhi.
Manufactured in India, the Milagrow iMap 9 is a floor disinfecting robot that can navigate and sanitize the floors without any human intervention. It can destroy COVID spores on floor surfaces using a sodium hypochlorite solution, as recommended by ICMR. The robot moves around autonomously without falling, avoiding obstruction while planning its own path, guided by LIDAR and advanced SLAM technology. Milagrow’s patented Real-Time Terrain Recognition Technology (RT2RT) scans at 3600, 6 times per second to make a floor map in real-time with an accuracy of up to 8mm over a 16m distance. This enables the iMap 9 to perform successfully in the first attempt, whereas other robots can take twice or thrice the time. Additionally, the robot can do zoning, virtual blocking of avoidable areas, and sequential cleaning of zones based on specific needs.
The Milagrow Humanoid ELF enables doctors to monitor and interact with contagious COVID-19 patients remotely with no person-to-person contact, thereby significantly reducing the transmission risk. Bored patients in isolation wards can also interact with their relatives from time to time through this robot. The Humanoid ELF can navigate around the ward independently and record the activities in high definition video and audio. Offering 8 hours of battery life, it can travel about 2.9 km per hour, is 92 cms tall, has more than sixty sensors, one 3D and one HD camera, and a 10.1″ display screen. The advanced humanoid features eyes with Emotion, Open API for further development and customization. Both the Milagrow iMap 9 and Humanoid ELF come with the auto charging feature.
- Could you share the results of how these robots have worked out during a pandemic?
In the fight against the spread of this epidemic you require 2 things. 1st the disinfection of the physical environments and 2nd protecting the medical staff by distancing them from patients and infected environments. Our robots do both the above functions.
- How do you think Robots will change future post-COVID?
Our disinfection robots can be used to sanitize floors, windows, doors, walls, air ducts, indoor and outdoor environments. Our telemedicine, surveillance and delivery robots not only do what their names suggest but also prevent frequent and close contact of the healthcare workers with the patients and infected environments. The future will use more and more such robots where reception and contactless patient handling can be done by robots. Milagrow is also planning to enter into the rehabilitation robots also in the next few months.
- What kind of infrastructure and technology will be required by companies in the near future to introduce robots?
Companies must automate all repetitive tasks where human intervention for relaxation of norms is not required. AI Software and Robots are the best way to accomplish that. Not just the workspaces but all recreation and relaxation spaces too have to be safe. Even the disinfection and sanitization tasks must not be left to human beings.
- What other domains do you think Robots could be used effectively?
Robots are here to stay. In my opinion, most of the facility management, hospitality, museums, shopping malls, and housekeeping operations will be taken over by robots forever. The repetitive tasks at the reception, guidance, and some diagnostic tasks can also be taken over by robots like the boarding pass printing machines at the airport. Telemedicine and telepresence where the doctors can attend to a patient or mark their presence in the hospital will be taken over completely by robots.
- What do Milagrow’s immediate milestones look like?
Immediate and biggest milestone is to improve each robot of ours to make sure that it can function fully independent of human intervention, for a designated task, after giving it the start instructions. This will ensure that we help organizations to enforce social distancing, yet maintain their premises or do their jobs even better than before.
