ABB Mobile Robots and Hospital Delivery Logistics

In a 1941 photo from Guy's Hospital in London, a nursing sister collects a tray of blood and plasma transfusion equipment to take to a ward. Hospitals ran on that kind of walking. Nurses and porters fetched drugs, linen, meals and samples by hand, often many times a shift.

A nursing sister collects a tray of transfusion equipment at Guy's Hospital, London, 1941. Photo: Ministry of Information / Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Pneumatic tubes took over some small items. In the 1990s robots like HelpMate started hauling carts between floors, and Aethon's TUG followed. These carts follow set routes and can call elevators, but somebody still loads and unloads them, and a nurse still walks to the pharmacy when something is missing.

A pneumatic tube station, used in hospitals to send small items between departments. Photo: Hexafluoride / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On August 17, Diligent Robotics, now part of Serve Robotics, began rolling out Moxi 2.0, a mobile robot with an arm that delivers medications, lab samples and supplies. Moxi runs in more than 25 US hospitals, and at Children's Hospital Los Angeles alone it has made over 40,000 deliveries.

A hospital delivery robot waiting at a service elevator where robots have priority. Photo: Mikael Häggström / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Much of this is the same problem a factory has. ABB's Flexley Mover AMRs, such as the P604 with Visual SLAM navigation, find their way through plants without floor tape or reflectors, and the compact P603 carries up to 1,500 kg. Engineers set up their routes and missions in ABB's AMR Studio software.

ABB Flexley Mover P604, an autonomous mobile robot with Visual SLAM navigation. Photo: ABB

ABB has also worked on the arm side for hospitals. At its healthcare research hub in Houston it showed a mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base meant to move between lab rooms and handle tubes and centrifuges. Moxi uses the same idea of an arm riding on a mobile base.

The compact ABB Flexley Mover P603 carrying stacked crates. Photo: ABB

A September market report sizes hospital mobile robots at $3.38 billion this year. I expect more of them to come with arms, so a robot can open a supply drawer, pick the right item and hand it to a nurse. That would take a lot of walking off the people who carried trays like the one in 1941.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com