After intensive surgery would you rather have your regular doc check your stiches via unnerving robot or settle for an unfamiliar albeit live physician? That's the question that a recent study at Johns Hopkin's has asked — if you can really call a 60-person survey, conducted by a doctor who also owns the robot-manufacturing company, a study. But this new "study" has found, that yes, patients prefer their own physician by way of robot-screen rather than settle for an unknown mystery doctor. InTouch Health Inc., owned by John Hopkin's urologist Dr. Kavoussi, has developed the robot system which uses a video camera, speaker and computer screen to conduct "telerounding", the robotic version of the short checkup visits doctors do throughout your hospital stay. From some distant location (maybe down the hall, maybe in the next state), the doctor uses a joystick to move the robot and to interact with eager patients. Probably the next step would be to just keep a similar screen, camera and speaker in every hospital room, and ditch the lone, wandering-robot altogether.
Wired News is reporting about Wired's NextFest performance of Asimo—the friendly little robot from Honda. There are two nice video clips of Asimo balancing his 'body' in one foot and climbing stairs up and down. Notice that Asimo is controlled remotely and doesn't listen or react to the people on stage like it seems.