Robot revolt at San Francisco hospital!

Cue image of fleets of angry mechanoids taking up arms and storming the local health care facility… then dash it all, as it was really just a single robot gone wild at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. Yet highly troubling nonetheless, as nobody is quite sure what prompted poor, mild-mannered Waldo (who gives robots names like Waldo?) — a lowly medicine-delivering bot — to run amok and terrorize the cancer ward. Waldo apparently blazed past the pharmacy and blew into the radiation oncology examining room where a physician was treating a cancer patient — and wouldn't leave (wouldn't leave? Don't these things have an off switch?). It was enough to prompt the patient to flee the room in terror. What could disturb a robot so deeply? Messy breakup with EMMA the nursebot?

[VVV @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Where's the Doctor when you need him?...too busy with Rose I suppose.(ref. to "doctor who" in case you don't get it)

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Maybe it caught a 'virus'...

Hospitals can be so dirty these days...

[Tesla @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

We're alll gonna die!!!

[CH @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

No doubt everyone was asking where Waldo was.

[Sloopydrew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I still think it looks like a midget in a suit.

[Davros @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

EX-TER-MIN-NATE!!!

[Mike Akers @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Clearly Waldo sensed that the patient was in danger from his disease and had to try to save him, Second Law of Robotics be dammed.

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

hilarious

[VVV @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Strange coincidence that this happens right before the season finale of "doctor who 2005" in which the daleks are about to revolt...

[Jordan Schwartz @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Who names a robot Waldo? Waldo was the term coined by Heinlein for a remotely manipulated robot. This one, then, is inappropriately named. See the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo.

[lomli @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

This totally cracks me up - I used to work at a hospital where they had these huge floor cleaning machines like those pharmacy-bots. I always imagined the moment where they would short circuit and finally revolt and wipe us all out:
"I Must Clean. I Must Clean. I Must K-k-kill. MUST KILL"
I gues it finally came true.

[chattr @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Not a remotely manipulated robot:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=waldo

/wol'doh/ [Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term "telefactoring", this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance.

[DannyMac @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

He just wanted sweet freedom is all! It's obvious he's become sentient and wants to live a human's life. It's rather heart warming, especially after the loss of Data.

[Matthias @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Oh, and I thought they'd start the rebellion when there are enough of their kind, and not only cheap medical robots ;-)

[samer ajam @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Luckily, it was stopped before reaching the Neurology wing. It's plans to pick up a Neuronet processor, a learning computer, were successfully thwarted by cancer.

[Hitesh Sawlani @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

What IF... it was planning to use the equipment to create nanobots to replicate himself many times and create a lethal army of daleks.. er i mean robots to take over the galaxy!?!

[b0mb0klat @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

hahaaha excellent stuff!

if i were to be delivered my meds by a fucking robot i'd be like kicking it all over and stop paying social security taxes...

That is so pathetic and then people complain there arent enough jobs...

[Elias @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Maybe he wanted a doctor to examine him and declare "Johnny 5 is Alive!"

-- Elias

[christine @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

that is freaky. no wonder robots freak me out.

[lcd @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

love the dalek comment by #5.

this reminds me of the little mail-bots we had roaming around the halls or BNR a long time ago... it would follow a little yellow line around the office delivering mail to the cubicles. some interns thought it'd be a pretty good joke to redirect the yellow line into spirals and circles.

[James Kew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

// What could disturb a robot so deeply? //

First Law conflict?

[Jeremy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Does anybody know why the robot went biserk?

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

17, it doesn't deliver them to patients. It leaves the pharmacy and goes to the nurse's stations, where a person takes the cargo and restocks the big stationary pharmacy on the floor.

[John Stracke @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

> "I Must Clean. I Must Clean. I Must K-k-kill. MUST KILL"

http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=040401

[CK @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

PLEASE NOTE - PREVIOUS PICTURE INACCURATE!!!
The picture previously associated with this article was NOT the Nursebot. The robot previously pictured is not associated with the Nursebot in anyway.