Photo credit: AsiaWire
A small army of nurse-assistant droids are now online and working to assist nurses in their day-to-day duties inside a Chinese hospital.
The droids, dubbed the Noah-series, run errands for the nurses, carrying documents, medicines, and other equipment between the pharmacy and the nurses’ station.
Noah bots utilize GPS technology to negotiate the hospital’s corridors and have been programmed to issue voice statements to alert people of their presence.
The droid squad is being trialled at Guangzhou Women and Children Medical Center, and if successful, further Noahs may be deployed across other medical facilities.
The implementation of the droids, which can carry about 10 times more weight than a human operator and maintain a perfectly sterile transport environment for pharmacological compounds, has re-ignited the debate about technology eliminating much-needed human jobs.
One single Noah can do the work of about four people, so the presence of the droids may reduce the need for human staff in the hospital wards.