ETRI’s NAMI.I Interface for Medical Humanoid Robot Wins IDEA Design Award

ETRI announced Sept. 29 that NAMI.I, the user interface for its NAMI medical-assistance humanoid robot, received the main award at the U.S. IDEA Design Awards. NAMI.I lets health care workers directly assign tasks to NAMI without learning complex robot programming or specialized controls. ETRI plans to pursue commercialization of medical-assistance robots following hospital demonstrations.

According to ETRI, NAMI.I is designed to let health care workers use NAMI without learning complex controls, and is intended for environments such as hospitals, where people and equipment move frequently. Whether staff on the ground can use a robot effectively, not just the robot’s performance, can determine whether it is adopted. This underscores the importance of operational design for medical institutions.

The award is notable because it recognizes the operating layer that determines who uses a medical humanoid and how, rather than the robot’s performance itself. NAMI.I does not demonstrate the robot’s autonomous navigation or grasping capabilities; it is an interface intended to let health care workers use the robot without learning specialized controls. In other words, the implementation focus appears to be on simplifying how tasks are assigned in the complex hospital environment rather than on adding advanced hardware capabilities. We have no related articles, so this comparison is limited to ETRI’s previous announcements. The 2024 award for MOBY and this award for NAMI.I reflect a continuing effort by the research institute to promote “user-centered robot interfaces” as a strength. However, MOBY’s award was for teach-pendant software for an autonomous mobile collaborative robot, while NAMI.I is a user interface for a medical-assistance humanoid; they target different use environments. Both share a design philosophy of making robot controls accessible to on-site staff. In hospitals, however, health care workers, patients and equipment are all moving, so the interface must do more than simplify operation: it must also adapt to changing conditions. An important implication for the industry is that barriers to adopting medical robots are shifting from the machines themselves to operational design. NAMI.I is intended for repetitive tasks such as transportation, organizing supplies, guiding patients and assisting with activities of daily living. For hospitals, the deciding factors will be which tasks to delegate to robots and how intuitively health care workers can use them. As a result, competition is likely to depend not only on performance metrics but also on how well products incorporate feedback and improvement requests from demonstrations. Unresolved questions include which functions will be finalized after the demonstrations, whether NAMI.I’s operating system can be deployed in general hospitals, and which features will be retained as standard in commercialization. The information available so far does not specify the demonstration period, number of units, scope of operations, price or sales destinations.

ETRI said NAMI.I is intended for use in medical settings and allows users to assign tasks based on “what they want the robot to do,” rather than setting precise robot movements. Tasks cited include transporting supplies and medicines, organizing medical supplies, guiding patients and assisting patients with daily activities. ETRI plans to apply NAMI.I to NAMI and conduct demonstrations with health care workers at Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital in Dalseo-gu, Daegu. The institute said it will analyze ease of use, areas for improvement and requests from health care workers to establish a foundation for commercializing medical-assistance humanoid robots. In 2024, ETRI also won Germany’s iF Design Award and the IDEA Design Award for the teach-pendant software of its autonomous mobile collaborative robot MOBY.

ETRI’s plan to design a robot’s operating layer for health care workers, with hospital demonstrations in mind, offers a point of reference for introducing robots in Japanese hospitals. For repetitive tasks such as transporting and organizing items in hospitals, an interface that non-specialists can use intuitively is often as important to adoption as the robot’s performance.