Meet Penelope, the new medical assistant robot

Just in case EMMA the nursebot didn't do it for you, there's a new medical assistant bot in town, codename: Penelope. This metallic medico may have all the personality of a swinging desk lamp, but it may also save your life. Penelope is trained to respond to a surgeon's commands for specific tools; if a surgeon calls out for a scalpel, then Penelope will hand it to her. Or if that's too practical for you, try Robotic Surgial Tech's explanation that its robot is like an "Instrument Server." As the company states on its site: "Much as a web server manages and serves web pages, Penelope manages and serves surgical instruments. Penelope processes requests for instruments as they come in. The instrument is located, fetched, and delivered." So does that mean if multiple surgeons ask for multiple items then it will suffer a distributed denial of service attack and start to 404?

[Via Robot Gossip]

[Cade Kachelmeier @ Sep 6th 2006 8:56AM]

I for one welcome our nurse overlords.

If you get injured, instead of giving the scalpal to the surgeon, they will use it as a weapon on mass destruction!!!!!

Muahahahaha......

[Aaron @ Sep 6th 2006 9:36AM]

Emma, Penelope... Stop giving human female names to ugly non-humanoid robots! Why does that happen??? Are the people who make these things just huge losers and don't get out enough? What happened to product names from decades ago that say exactly what something does? I'd be much happier with Robo-Scalpel-Grabber 9000 or something stupid like that than Penelope. Come on!

Now that I got that out... This seems like something that could have been done a long time ago and doesn't particularly impress me. I guess it's helpful because it wasn't already there, but I see little innovation here. But that's just me, and I'm definitely not a surgeon. I hope they find this helpful and it saves a few extra lives.

[rickm @ Sep 6th 2006 9:37AM]

I for one do not welcome our nurse overlords.

How will all my hospital fantasies be met va a robot? :)

"Oh nurse.....!"

[James @ Sep 6th 2006 1:10PM]

I for one welcome our scalpel-wielding, surgery-performing, soon-to-be-cannibalistic-and-bloodthirsty overlords.

[J Ozer @ Sep 6th 2006 5:39PM]

No, not at all, if too many surgons ask for tools, it will simply crash and turn all motors and servos up to full power.

[yumyum76 @ Sep 6th 2006 7:22PM]

So..which one's Penelope then?
The one standing at the back?

[Paris @ Sep 7th 2006 12:29PM]

well i just wanted to say I loled at the 404 joke. and in response to rickm's comment, the way designs are going, especialy with bots like penelope your fooling around in the linnen closet with the nurse expereince sounds like a painfull one.

[leonard @ Sep 8th 2006 7:24PM]

This could be the greatest invention to serve mankind... ever.