Robot teddy bear nurses? Only in Japan…

It’s common these days to gripe about the NHS. If you’re not getting MRSA you’re being ignored by the staff. It’s badly funded, under staffed and generally falling on it’s knees is the apparent overview. Now, I have no gripes against the NHS personally, but you hear the stories and can’t help but wonder what can be done to make things better.

Of course, this been Gaj-it, I like the idea Japan are looking into implementing within the next five years- robot nurses. But not just any robot nurses, oh no. This is Riba, apparently the world first robot able to lift human beings in it’s arms. And it’s a giant teddy bear.

Riba stands for Robot for Interactive Body Assistance, and was developed by the state-run Riken research center as an upgrade to 2006’s Ri-man robot. Ri-Man could lift 40 pounds. Riba can lift 134 pounds. It (She? He?) is designed to transfer patients from beds to wheel chairs. The arms (paws?) are padded with foam so as to avoid injury, and when you consider that in Japan it’s likely to be put to use amongst old people then you can see why.

I’m not sure why Riba looks like a teddy bear though. It’s suppoesedly less daunting, although personally if I was going a little bit senile, being hauled around by a giant metal bear would make me freak the hell out rather than reassure me! Better for kids wards surely?!

The aim with Riba is to decrease the demands on the human workforce through the development of increasingly sophisticated robots. If you’ve ever seen people being moved in hospitals you can see how such a simple lift and place robot would be a huge help- staff often have to double up to move patients, and it does take time. A few robots to do those tasks would mean more qualified nurses free to attend to other patients (provided the robots were safe enough to work unsupervised of course).

So that’s under staffing sorted then, now just to clean up the super bugs and various animal based flues…

Source- Crave