TUG and ROXIE, the creepy hall roaming robots

Geisinger is on the cutting edge of health care.  Evidently this includes ways in which to distribute supplies.  I've been in several hospitals that have tube systems to deliver specimens from inpatient floors to the laboratories below (think the drive-up teller at a bank), but I've never seen automatic hall roaming robots.  Geisinger has two of these robots.  From what I understand, they deliver supplies from a central location to floors all over the hospital.  Both robots are large rectangular boxes on wheels with two large round buttons on top; one button encircled in red, one encircled in green (stop and go perhaps?).  The "oldest" of the two robots is TUG, it "rides elevators alone."  I'm serious, it literally has red tape around the top of it on all sides that says, "TUG rides elevators alone."  I have yet to test and see what happens if you try to ride an elevator with TUG.  The other is named ROXIE, it/she has no red tape, so can apparently commingle in an elevator.  The robots remind me of one of the dysfunctional, rectangular robots on the space ship from 'WALL-E.'

"How innovative," you may think; "creepy," I say.  I initially thought they were innovative, now I also feel creeped out by them.  I've pin-pointed this feeling as a combination of three sources: 1) personal interaction with the robots, 2) observation of the robots and 3) Hollywood films (specifically 'WALL-E' and the 'Terminator' films, both of which ultimately portray human kind as being controlled by machines).  For the most part interactions with either 'bot involves a person seeing them cruise down a hallway from afar, and stepping out of the way to let the 'bot pass without incident.  But sometimes, and this has happened to me more than once, an unsuspecting person will be standing in a hallway, involved in an engrossing conversation, and BAM! out of nowhere comes a loud "beep-blooping" sound followed by a disgruntled, automated female voice saying, "hallway blocked, must re-route."  Now I assume this is the robot "thinking" out loud to itself so it doesn't accidentally get backed into by an unsuspecting human, but part of me thinks that the robot is really saying, "Yo!  Stop loitering and get outta the way!  I'm on a mission people."  It's a nice warning system really, but the skeptic in me wonders how it knows there's a blockage to it's route and how far that blockage-searching technology reaches.  I've happened upon both robots as they've exiting elevators alone and opened badge-secured double doors, since we were going in the same direction I've followed behind them.  The way the 'bots move is, for lack of a better term, robotic.  Cold, calculating and "seeing" in 360 degrees.  Not to mention the "open sesame!" way in which they can get through locked doors.

They say people fear the unknown.  Since I don't know much about these robots perhaps that's the "creepiness" I feel.  Here is a sampling of the litany of questions I have: What happens if I accidentally touch/back into the robot?  Does it have a force field?  Does it have a shock probe ala R2D2?  What is it really carrying in those locked drawers?  How much does it "know" about its surroundings?  How the heck can it navigate the convoluted hallways and wings that are Geisinger Medical Center (the navigation must be as sophisticated as Google Maps)?  Can the navigation technology be turned into an app for new employees to use in order to navigate this place  (I learned today that "Abigail Geisinger Pavilion" and "Geisinger Pavilion" are in fact different, one is not short for the other)?  Perhaps I'll never know (though I do plan on trying to ride an elevator with TUG by accident, just to see).

Photo curtesy of: http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18200000/WALL-E-wall-e-18247125-1772-1249.jpg