TAICHUNG (TVBS News) — You probably think of artificial intelligence as something that lives on your phone or laptop, a chatbot, a search assistant, a recommendation engine. But in a hospital corridor in central Taiwan, a pink robot named AiBao (愛寶) is already rolling between nursing stations, delivering patient education and medication reminders while nurses attend to tasks that require a human touch.
Taiwan, like much of the developed world, faces a chronic nursing shortage. Hospitals struggle to retain staff, and those who remain often work long shifts with little time for care patients need. It is a crisis that technology companies increasingly claim they can help solve, not by replacing nurses, but by taking over routine tasks that consume their hours.
Erin Huang (黃凡芩), a project manager at EverBot Technology Co. (長聯科技), the company behind AiBao, said the robot can reduce nursing workloads by 30 to 50 percent. The company's claim has not been independently verified, but Huang described a machine that handles patient education, delivers reminders, and accompanies nurses on their rounds.
"I believe that once they use it, over time they definitely won't be able to live without it, just like our smartphones," Huang said.
Kathy Yang (楊秋瑾), Foxconn's global chief campus operation officer, told the forum that the company has been testing smart city technologies across its 242 campuses worldwide, some housing as many as 400,000 workers, before deploying them in actual cities.
"Before we even deployed smart city tech to actual cities, we were already using it in our smart campuses," Yang said during her keynote.
In Foxconn's terminology, "campus" refers to the company's sprawling manufacturing complexes, self-contained industrial cities that house not only production lines but also dormitories, cafeterias, banks, clinics, and recreational facilities for workers who often live on-site.
"Inside these campuses we have everything, restaurants, banks, transportation, clinics, sports facilities, anything you can imagine," Yang said. "They're basically small cities."
But as AI moves from screens to streets and hospital floors, the stakes rise sharply. Sheena Liu (劉文硯), general manager of TVBS, warned at the forum that Physical AI demands a different kind of trust.
"If AI makes a mistake, the cost is very high," Liu said. "It could be a car on the road, a medical robot caring for patients, or a manufacturing robot working alongside people."
Speaking at the event, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) called Physical AI a "once-in-a-century" chance for the city's manufacturers, announcing plans to form an "AI Taichung Team" and an "RT Taichung Robot Alliance" to link local firms with international partners.
Taiwan's industrial production continues to surge, with the manufacturing production index hitting a record high in July, rising 26.89 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (經濟部). The surge marks the 29th consecutive month of year-on-year growth, fueled by booming demand for AI servers and semiconductor wafer foundry services.
A recent think tank report suggested Taiwan has a "golden but narrowing" three-to-five-year window to establish itself as a key supplier for the global robotics industry outside China, which currently accounts for 85 percent of humanoid robot shipments worldwide.
Back at the hospital, patients are still getting used to their new pink companion. Huang said many react with surprise when they first see AiBao, "their eyes light up," she said, though the robot remains stationed primarily at nursing desks and in the lobby of Asia University (亞洲大學) for now.
Whether AiBao becomes as indispensable as a smartphone, or joins the long list of overpromised technologies, remains to be seen. But in Taichung, the future is already rolling down the hallway. ◼