Robots Tarzan and Jane, aided by AI, take over repetitive tasks at B.C. hospital lab

Far from the jungle, Tarzan and Jane swing quietly into action in a sterile laboratory at St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver.

They are robots that work with artificial intelligence to handle and process up to 70 per cent of the hospital's microbiology samples.

The pair unscrew specimen tubes and streak the samples onto bacterial culture plates in the new $1-million automated WASPLab, short for "walk-away specimen processor."

It's not glamorous work, but it's a big job — the St. Paul's lab handles more than 145,000 microbiological samples each year from B.C. and Yukon.