Hidden Challenges of Deploying Robots in the Real World
In the second half of 2024, the startup I co-founded, Akara, reached a major milestone: the first full handover of our autonomous robots at a hospital site. Each night, our robots now operate independently, disinfecting the hospital’s operating rooms without human supervision. Although we demonstrated their core functionality back in December 2020, it has taken years of iteration and development to reach this point.
During this time, we’ve made significant changes to the hardware (now in its fourth iteration), refined the robot’s user interface, and improved its algorithms. However, the most significant challenge wasn’t the robot itself; it was building the operating infrastructure needed to operationalize these robots in the real world. This crucial aspect is often overlooked but is essential for success.
In this series of six posts, I’ll share some of the operational challenges we’ve faced and how we’ve tackled them.
