This Robot Is Cute, Artificially Intelligent and Employed

Bloomberg reports:

Willie McTuggie looks like a photocopier on wheels. But he — it, actually — has the engineered brain of a reasonably smart human, and acts like one when when he rolls up to a nurse’s station, opens a drawer, retrieves a dose of pills and glides off to make a delivery.

Packed with more than 30 motion-detecting and other sensors, Willie and his automated buddies at the UCSF Medical Center can open doors, avoid collisions with doctors on rounds and perceive when to wait for a free elevator. There are 25 mobile bots from the robotics company Aethon Inc. on staff, named and decorated by mortal colleagues. Willie's wrapped in the San Francisco Giant’s team colors of orange and black, and Maybelle is designed to look like one of the city’s cable cars.

The machines perform duties once handled by nurses, orderlies, cafeteria staff and maintenance crews. So far, no people have lost jobs to the bot corps. "It does displace certain roles, but we can put that headcount into other service roles," says Pamela Hudson, executive director of clinical systems at the University of California, San Francisco, hospital. It is, she says, a win-win.

No word yet from the "$15 an hour crowd " on this one.