Serv Robotics, the Nvidia and Uber-backed company that developed sidewalk delivery robots, is expanding into a new area: healthcare.
The vendor said this week it has acquired Texas-based startup Diligent Robotics AI-powered hospital-assistant robot Called moxie. Serv did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Diligent Robotics will continue to operate as a subsidiary of Serv under the leadership of CEO Andrea Thomaz.
The deal is expected to close at the end of the first quarter.
This acquisition marks the first time Serv has expanded into indoor robotic applications, however. statementThe companies said they see a “common autonomy and AI stack” to accelerate the deployment and scalability of assistive robots across industries.
Sarva President and COO Toraj Parang said AI business Healthcare is a “high-impact environment” for robotics, making it a prime opportunity for expansion.
“Health care facilities demand reliability, safety and seamless operations around people,” Parang said. “These are all capabilities we have proven extensively in dense urban environments with our outdoor autonomous delivery fleets. Diligent brings the indoor counterpart.”
hardworking and moxie
Since its founding in 2017 by MIT roboticist Thomaz and Georgia Tech roboticist Vivian Chu, Diligent has raised more than $75 million in venture capital.
Company’s Moxie robot, powered by AI giant NVIDIA’s embedded hardware and software ecosystem is deployed in more than 25 health care systems across the US, including Northwestern Medicine, ChristianaCare and Rochester General Hospital.
This real-world validation inspired Serv to acquire Diligent, Parang said. Together, the companies envision a symbiotic learning model in which indoor and outdoor robots would learn from each other over a shared data platform.
“This acquisition creates a learning cycle in both indoor and outdoor autonomy,” he said. “Serve and Diligent will operate on a shared autonomy and AI stack, so each robot contributes data to and learns from the others on the same physical AI platform.”
He added, “The ultimate vision is a single shared platform that enables robots to navigate around people in complex environments.” “This is a very hard problem. The more data you have, and the more real-world situations these robots encounter, the better the whole system will become.”
While Serva’s immediate focus is on the health care environment, including hospitals and elder care facilities, Parang says the platform has much broader applications than that.
“The same full-stack physical ai The platform we are developing for indoor and outdoor autonomy can be applied in many settings,” he says. “This includes food services, pharmacies, retail – basically anywhere robots can help make labor more productive and effective.”
Parang designed these expanded applications as a broader step toward creating systems that can support broader robotic use.
“Over time, we see Serv and Diligent’s robots working on an autonomy stack, a shared data flywheel, and an operating system for robots working in social environments,” Parang says. “Our ultimate vision is that autonomy becomes part of the infrastructure, of everyday life, helped wherever possible.”
