A decade ago security researcher Barnaby Jack famously wirelessly hacked a hospital insulin pump live on stage in front of hundreds of people to demonstrate how easily it could be compromised to deliver a lethal dose of medication. In the years that have passed, medical device security has gotten better, albeit with an occasional high-profile hiccup. But researchers are now finding vulnerabilities in newer hospital technologies that weren't as ubiquitous a decade ago. Enter autonomous hospital robots, the supposed-to-be-friendly self-controlled digital workhorses that can transport medications, bed linens, food, medications and laboratory specimens across a hospital campus. These robots, such as the ones built by robot maker Aethon, are equipped with the space to transport critical goods and security access to enter restricted parts of the hospital and ride elevators, all while cutting labor costs.

Robots seem so far away. We're so many years from Jetsons-esque machines that live among us and wash our dishes and fold our clothes. But the reality is the robots have arrived--you're just not noticing them. Take a robot called Tug, for instance. No, Tug can't talk philosophy with you, and Tug can't do your laundry.

Recent events demonstrate the growing presence of indoor mobile robots: (1) Savioke's hotel butler robot won the 2017 IERA inventors award; (2) Knightscope's security robot mistook a reflecting pond for a solid floor and dove in face-first to the delight of Twitterdom and the media; and (3) the sale of robotic hospital delivery provider Aethon to a Singaporean conglomerate. Travis Deyle, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Cobalt Robotics which is developing indoor robots for security purposes, in an article in IEEE Spectrum, posited that commercial spaces are the next big marketplace for robotics and that there's a massive, untapped market in each of the commercial spaces shown in his chart below: "Commercial spaces could serve as a great stepping stone on the path toward general-purpose home robots by driving scale, volume, and capabilities. The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE/RAS) jointly sponsor an annual IERA (Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation) Award which this year was presented to the Relay butler robot made by Savioke, a Silicon Valley startup. Listed below are a few of the companies in the emerging mobile robot indoor commercial marketplaces described in Deyle's chart above.

Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering) has acquired Pittsburgh, PA-based robotics firm Aethon Inc through Vision Technologies Land Systems, Inc. (VTLS), and its wholly-owned subsidiary, VT Robotics, Inc, for $36 million. The acquisition will be carried out by way of a merger with VT Robotics, a special newly incorporated entity established for the transaction. The merger will see Aethon as the surviving entity that will operate as a subsidiary of VTLS, and will be part of the the ST Group's Land Systems sector. Aethon's leadership team and employees will remain in place and the company will continue to operate out of its Pittsburgh, PA location. ST Engineering, S63 on the Singapore Stock Exchange, is a Singapore-based integrated defense and engineering group focused in aerospace, electronics, and land, sea and air unmanned systems for the battlefield.

Autonomous robots can perform actions or complete tasks with a high degree of autonomy, which makes them ideal for applications such as space exploration or cleaning your living room carpet. Mobile robots are capable of moving from place to place. Researchers say a wearable tattoo can deliver accurate blood-alcohol level readouts to its wearer's smartphone. Put these capabilities together and you got a powerful machine that can handle lots of tasks in industrial environments such as factories, as well as in hospitals, hotels, and other areas. And, in fact, one of the more prominent trends in robotics today is the growing popularity of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), with new vendors jumping into the market and sales on the rise.