Nguyen added that hospitals are under pressure to reduce health care costs, and robots could be used to cut expensive hospital stays.
“Physicians like me are constantly being asked to be more efficient with our time and money,’’ Nguyen said. “This is a technology that allows us to be very cautious, efficient, and innovative at the same time.’’
After developing and testing prototypes of its robots, five-year-old Vgo Communications worked with Verizon Wireless’s Innovation Program center in Waltham, where the telecom company helps incubate new technologies, to embed Verizon’s cellular communications technology into the robots. Through its connection to the cellular network, a Vgo does not need to rely on Internet broadband connections.
Vgo Communications has raised more than $12 million in venture capital since its founding and has 16 employees. It has sold about 200 of the robots, manufactured for it by a company in Spokane, Wash., since January.
“We think we have a lot of good traction in this niche,’’ said Peter Vicars, the company’s chief executive.
Another potential use for the robots is as avatars for children too sick to attend school. The devices could go into classes, allowing a student to “attend’’ from home.
The robots could also be sold for security monitoring tasks.
But health care is the most intriguing field, industry officials say.
A Bedford company, iRobot Corp., has teamed up with InTouch Health of Santa Barbara, Calif., to develop a “remote presence’’ robot nicknamed Ava, which the companies say could one day perform health care tasks at patients’ homes.
“It’s a powerful idea,’’ said Colin Angle, iRobot’s chief executive. IRobot produces the popular Roomba floor cleaner and robots used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other products.
Last month, InTouch, which makes in-hospital robots, filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Vgo Communications, claiming the New Hampshire company was improperly using two of its patented technologies dealing with remote controls and front-end cameras.
Yulun Wang, chief executive of InTouch, said the lawsuit is based on the “whole concept of remote-presence robots’’ and called the at-home robotics market a potentially “huge area’’ of growth.
Vicars denied the allegations of patent infringement and vowed that his company will defend itself aggressively against the lawsuit.
Nguyen said he is glad companies are competing to develop health care robots.
“With competition, we’ll see the prices getting much better,’’ he said.
