This robot is helping one retirement community expand its dining services in Tacoma
A local retirement community has introduced a robot to help dining staff deliver meals. It even offers birthday greetings.
The addition of the robot has allowed GenCare Lifestyle Tacoma at Point Ruston, 4970 Main St., to expand its dining to all-day service.
According to a GenCare Lifestyle news release, the robot “brings made-to-order meals and refreshments to the dining table, cutting daily steps by its human server teammates in half ... making work easier for staff and freeing up staff time to focus on the resident experience.”
“The staff and residents have embraced this new technology in ways we never expected,” said GenCare Lifestyle founder and CEO Leon Grundstein in a statement. “I think we’ve only begun to fully realize the impact and value that our new robot colleague will have in Point Ruston.”
The Point Ruston retirement community is not unique in turning to robots to help share workloads. The New York Times reported in April 2022 that development of specialized robots for assisted living and long-term care had started before the COVID-19 pandemic. Development and use increased through the pandemic to help address worker shortages, though officials in the article emphasized they are meant to supplement, not replace, workers.
GenCare Lifestyle’s Tacoma-Point Ruston site is the first among GenCare’s network of six locations in the Puget Sound region to add the robot. It received the robot in September.
GenCare representatives told The News Tribune via email that just like any new employee, the robot “has been ‘on-boarding’ and learning the new place.” For example, the first floor has been mapped with signal devices to help it navigate.
Along with meal delivery to tables, the robot can greet residents, share announcements and assist in clearing tables. It can provide 12 hours of service on a single charge and carry up to 66 pounds on three meal trays.
It also can sing “Happy Birthday” as it delivers birthday cake to a resident.
The robot is a ServeBot S1 from Segway Robotics, programmed and distributed by Afunture Solutions, a U.S.-based robotics company.
The residents call it R2D2 after the “Star Wars” robot.
According to a fact sheet provided by GenCare, the robot can travel 1 to 3.9 feet per second.
“The addition of the robot cuts in half an estimated 15,000 daily steps taken by each member of the Point Ruston serving staff,” GenCare said in its release, “The increased efficiency of having the robot deliver meals and return dishes to the kitchen afterward results in more time for staff to communicate and interact with customers and improve the resident experience at Point Ruston.”
Given the tight labor market, the company says it is “assessing each of its six communities across the Puget Sound for more opportunities to use robots.”
GenCare Lifestyle opened in 2020 at Point Ruston. The community offers a broad spectrum of living options from active retirement to assisted living and memory care. In operation more than 20 years, it also has sites in Ballard, Federal Way, Renton, Granite Falls and Lynnwood.
