Silicon Valley startup OhmniLabs makes skinny, 20-pound telepresence robots on wheels that can be remotely controlled from anywhere. About 1,000 of them have already been deployed by hundreds of customers in 40 countries.
One of their most vital functions in recent months has been to connect families with loved ones suffering from COVID-19 who are confined to hospital ICU wards. They also been used to act as telepresence companions to elderly shut-ins, to inspect an airplane engine up close and to sell art in a gallery. A rugged terrain model is in the works, while another model will soon be equipped to shine UV light on surfaces to kill germs.
Ohmni Robot allows patient access by relatives in hospitals, but also “allows nurses and doctors to check in on patients without going through the PPE process,” said OhmniLabs CEO and co-founder Thuc Vu in an interview with Fierce Electronics. Otherwise, “it’s risky for a nurse to use the nurse’s phone with a patient.”
OhmniLabs counts Mt. Sinai Hospital of New York and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta among its customers. The company has posted a case study of its telepresence robots used for two years at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. https://ohmnilabs.com/content/ohmni-for-hospitalized-children/ The base model for such purposes goes for $2,700, and there are customizable features, Vu said.
“With the pandemic, our robots have been deployed in 40 hospitals and health care systems,” Vu said. “The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of robots and we’re seeing an explosion of growth now. The demand is off the charts.”
The biggest challenge is to keep the price point low and provide several iterations that can fit into various use cases, Vu said. Some UV clearning robots on the market are going for $50,000 to $250,000, but Ohmni hopes to keep the price of its cleaning model at $25,000.
Another feature that will be attractive to some customers: the robots are manufactured in Silicon Valley. They are designed with 3D printers that allow OhmniLabs to print out an entire arm, instead of printing out many parts.
Vu explained to me how the Ohmni Robot can be controlled remotely from a keyboard, using the arrow keys to move about and other keys to zoom in and out. I was able to move the robot in the Ohmni offices in California from my laptop in Virginia past a desk and then zoom to see a sign across the room. I could tell it would take a little practice to get used to it.
The camera is equipped with a 3D zoom and provides 4K resolution. It can be integrated with Zoom videoconference calls. Users can take 13-megapixel snapshots anytime, which are streamed to the browser. A far-field mic and speaker are built in.
The runtime on its battery is up to five hours. It doesn’t work without a network connection. The overall height is 4-feet, 8-inches and it run on three wheels.
Vu said OhmniLabs is launching an autonomous platform next year, allowing the robot to navigate on its own. Currently, the Ohmni Robots are in their 13th generation, five years after the company’s inception.
OhmniLabs was founded by Vu in 2015 along with Jared Go and Tingxi Tan—all graduates of Carnegie Mellon and Stanford. Vu is described in company materials as a “serial entrepreneur” since he founded Katango and Tappy, which were acquired by Google and Weeby.co.
Asked whether the founders plan to sell OhmniLabs anytime in the near future, Vu said, “the future is existing…We want to become the robotics platform for other companies. Our longer vision is where we work together.”
OhmniLabs may even function as a partner to service companies, which could include augmenting the services of a large cleaning company, he said.
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