ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – With its new Arthur M. Blank Hospital, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta now has more space to care for more children. But that space also means more ground for its workers to cover.

The solution? A fleet of robots that roam the halls, remotely open doors, and even have their own elevators.

The robots use LiDar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It’s a method that uses light to create 3D models that allow the robots to move around the hospital and keep them from bumping into people.

“I’ve never worked at a hospital with a robot system before,” said pharmacy resident Kaitlyn Currie. “You don’t have everyone running up and down from the floor to the pharmacy.”

The robots are monitored from the hospital’s basement.

“This our control room where we manage all of our robots,” said senior advisor Perry Bhamornsiri, showing off a small room with a few chairs and multiple large screens high on the wall.

Bhamornsiri helps oversee all 90 T-3 Aethon robots.

“It tells you where they are and when their job began,” he said of the monitors.

Throughout the day, the robots make supply runs, deliver medication and food, carry linens and medical waste, and even take out the trash.

Sara gattis / clinical manager, children’s healthcare of atlanta

“When you’re going from a six-story building to a 19-story building, it definitely saves a lot of time,” said Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Clinical Manager Sara Gattis.

The robots have kid-friendly covers and good manners.

But with anything technology, there are also worries that these robots could take jobs. Bhamornsiri is adamant that’s not the case. To him, it’s about subsidizing the workload, not replacing workers.

While SkyNet likely isn’t in the future for these T-3s, more comprehensive implementation could be.

“I do think more and more hospitals will adapt,” Gattis said.

And one where humans work hand-in-hand with those who just have wheels.

“It’s a very unique experience,” Currie said.

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Award-winning filmmaker William Feagins Jr. was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has since made his home right here in Atlanta, Georgia.

Feagins love for and connection with Atlanta inspired him to start a series more than six years ago to document the communities that he is most intimately tied into. 

“Our Voices, Our Lives,” hosted on YouTube, chronicles the journeys of Atlanta’s Black and brown entrepreneurial and creative class. The series recently won the Best Web Series Award at Atlanta’s BronzeLens Awards, and Feagins himself was presented with the very first BronzeLens Georgia Filmmaker Award for his achievements in sharing important stories.

“City Lights” producer Jacob Smulian recently chatted with Feagins about his work with Atlanta’s creative class and “Our Voices, Our Lives.”

The series originally started as a pilot for a DC public access cable channel, and while it never ended up making it to air, Feagins continued documenting the journeys of his creative and entrepreneurial peers and posting the results on YouTube.

Six years later, the series has hit its 82nd episode, with no real end in sight. The project has been a labor of love and tenacity for Feagins, who spends his free time recording and editing new episodes.

“I work full time, so I primarily film the interviews on weekends and then I do all the editing after work or on a weekend,” he shared about his dedication to the show.

His introduction to Atlanta’s creative scene came after he moved to the city in 2009, and he explained to Smulian that the first community that he came across in the city was “the spoken word community, [but] all communities have a lot of overlap. So through that, I found a hip hop community, and through that, I found the arts community – because there’s a lot of people who play in all those fields.”

You can find more about Feagins and his incredible work at his website here.

Some residents came together to remember the life of an environmental official after his sudden death last week. Kenny Johnson, who was the county’s soil and water conservation district supervisor, collapsed shortly after speaking at a public forum lawmakers hosted at the state Capitol about the BioLab chemical fire.