When you arrive at the Sheba Medical Center, in Ramat Gan, a few kilometers outside Tel Aviv, the impression is that of crossing the threshold of a city. Here, they say, something like twenty thousand cars pass a day, in what is the largest hospital in the whole Middle East. Getting around is anything but simple, or rather, it takes time. For some months, however, there has been someone who has been doing it instead of doctors, nurses and health workers, or logistics staff, faster and at a lower cost.
It is Polly, a fully autonomous robot, developed to move alone from one part of the hospital to the other. She can do this in and out of buildings, locate and take elevators, open doors and gates, move between people, and mostly serve for the transport of drugs.
Inside, in fact, Polly houses a refrigerator: it opens with the badges of authorized doctors and nurses who interact with it via a display, loads the necessary and carries it where it is needed. It is certainly not the first in its category: robots in hospitals that transport things (devices, drugs or meals) have been talked about for a while, and Polly therefore boasts older colleagues, such as Tug, or Hospi, just to name a few and robots similar were deployed in China at the start of the pandemic. But Polly, according to her creators, has some advantages.
“We are probably the only ones to date able to guarantee a possibility of movement both indoors and outdoors – he explains to Salute Amir Nardimorat the head of Seamless Vision, the Israeli company that produces it – the technology behind our robot was initially developed to guide the visually impaired and blind in urban areas and we then refined the system to allow safe and uninterrupted navigation in environments at high human intensity “.
So that today Polly, thanks to this and the possibility of communicating with the lift system as well as opening doors controlled with RFID technology, is able to move in complex and dynamic environments, at any time, assures Nardimor. To date, there is only one Polly operating at Sheba Medical Center, but within the year there will be three, and others will be added in the future, up to thirty.
As a delivery system, the possibilities of use are manifold. In fact, if it was initially designed for the transport of chemotherapy drugs from the hospital pharmacy to the oncology center, there is no reason not to imagine different uses depending on the needs.
It can carry up to 100kg of cargo, and may in the future accommodate different sections for multiple loads and deliveries throughout the day. In fact, the idea is to use it 24 hours a day, and when the battery is finished (it lasts from 8 to 10 hours) just change it with a new one, without needing a pit stop to recharge, continues Nardimor.
“Polly is completely autonomous and does not need any human intervention to plan and execute deliveries.” In Israel but also elsewhere: negotiations are in fact underway to export the technology also to hospitals in the United States, Singapore and the United Kingdom, confides Nardimor.