IWARD nursebot looks to clean hospitals, fend off intruders

We all know security gets a little heavy eyed when the wee hours of the morning roll around, and we highly doubt the janitorial staff is humming along at maximum efficiency when the residents are snoozing away, so implementing a robot to tackle both tasks seems quite practical. The IWARD project hopes to develop a "nursebot" that wears several hats, and can handle cleaning up spills, utilizing face and voice recognition technology to "communicate with patients and spot unauthorized visitors," and even working in "swarms" to distribute tasks between the robotic crew. Researchers are aiming to have a three bot prototype ready to rock by 2010, and want to integrate sensors and camera to avoid collisions whilst "traveling along high-speed lanes in the hospital corridors." Better steer grandma's wheelchair clear of the robotic raceway, eh?

[Via TechieDiva]

[Ezekiel Mihelcic @ Feb 17th 2007 12:18PM]

I, for one, welcome our new robot nurses.

[Kevlar @ Feb 17th 2007 1:13PM]

I don't. I'll stick with the good old warm soft friendly nurses of yesteryear, thank you very much.

[RN @ Feb 17th 2007 2:48PM]

This is quite offensive that they call it a nurse-bot. Nurses are not house keepers. Not even nurse assistants have to clean the floor.

[Gary @ Feb 17th 2007 3:34PM]

You Go Girl!! Nurses are without a doubt the most underpaid, over worked, and least appreciated people in a hospital. Doctors usually treat them like dirt, and the patients do too. It may be called a "Nursebot", but it is really just a glorified janitor. The nurses cannot be replaced by a machine!!

[Dave @ Feb 17th 2007 3:42PM]

The worst insult of all is that it appears to have a toilet for a head.

[Wolfman @ Feb 17th 2007 3:50PM]

RN and Gary:

Just remember that robots will be your doctors someday. If they hear all of this... unrest... they may forget to plug in the defibrillators. They'll then take over the world and try to download your brain into the Matrix.

Don't freak out too much about them being called nurse-bots. They're probably a medical fad, like leeches and bloodletting. And if they're still around in a few decades, maybe they'll have a suffrage movement or something.

[Wolfman @ Feb 17th 2007 3:51PM]

And since when was it the nurses' job to fend off intruders?

And who's going to be intruding on the average tonsillectomy patient? The designers have spent too much time watching ER and Grey's Anatomy. Speaking of which, as soon as they design a nursebot that can make whoopee in a hospital warehouse, then they'll have perfected the idea and will start replacing actresses portraying nurses and female doctors. The real female doctors and nurses will keep their jobs, because in the real world, nobody ducks into a closet and gets it on in the typical hospital. Although I understand that was how I was conceived; my parents lived under the floorboards in the hospital for 9 months after that.

[AlphaGeek @ Feb 17th 2007 5:28PM]

Looks like a urinal. If they put this into service, I give it a week at the outside before some befuddled senior citizen takes a leak on it.

[Wun Chiou @ Feb 17th 2007 5:58PM]

Oh piss-bot . . . wait for the shake . . .

[LE @ Feb 19th 2007 12:54AM]

wow I hope they first fix the problems with voice commands and recognition if they want it to communicate with humans.

patient: "help I need a doctor"

Nursebot: "I am sorry I didn't understand what you said please say again."