Honda has presented an advanced social robot operated through artificial intelligence called ‘Haru’ in the hospital of Virgen del Rocío in Seville, Spain to enhance the quality of life for children requiring long-time treatment of cancer.
The announcement was made during the Annual Gala for Childhood Cancer on the eve of Thanksgiving; the 28th of November.This boost robot known as Haru has been developed by the Honda Research Institute Japan or HRI-JP and is approximately 30cm/ 12 inches tall, a desk-top robot in fact. It’s intended to deal with children in a polite and encouraging manner.
Facial recognition and voice recognition technologies are integrated into the hardware so that Haru can detect a person’s mood. It then offers comforting gestures and statues as well as words to make children feel more comfortable.
Haru can even be utilized in wearable sensors for further examination of the state of the user.Unknown of what makes Haru outstanding is that it has no human characteristic such as sex or origin. It also makes it easy to reach out to people of different ages and origin right from any group.
Since 2021, the hospital has piloted Haru in the context of the pediatric oncology ward in order to empower young cancer patients throughout both emotional and clinical care. From the positive results obtained from these trials it has made the hospital make the units official and make 10 units of Haru available to aid the children’s lives.
Haru’s goal is simple, to change the focus from what technology can do to make life worse and show, at least occasional, ways how technology can enhance people’s lives.
