Robots

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Perrotfish

Perrotfish

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Alright, random question, but is anyone else wierded out by the robots wandering around the basements of Balboa? They don't clean, I've never seen anyone interact with one, they don't seem to carry anything, and I've never seen them do anything other than travel up and down the halls. I have never seen anything like these things in any civilian hospital, or any other military hospital. Why are they there?
 
I'm not familiar with the robots at Balboa, but I have seen robots used to transport samples from one laboratory station to another in a large clinical lab. Could just be ferrying samples.
 
They also use them for meds and types of supplies. USC has a whole network of them.
 
buckrogers.jpg


Like these kinds?
 
I googled it and came across this:

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-24/local/me-37943_1_balboa-park

Apparently they have been there for quite some time delivering meals and such? This sounds pretty awesome, at any rate.


When I did a research internship at the Army Institute for Surgical Research at Ft. Sam they were working on the tele-medicine stuff. Every now and then on the burn ward you would see a robot looking thing puttering along with a monitor for the "head" showing a webcam image of the intensivist controlling it. Pretty amusing.
 
They do actually carry stuff (meals I think, not sure what else). They also use their own elevators which is really funny to see I think. (the room with their elevators was across the hall from the workroom I was in while I was on medicine there) I always got a kick out of running accross one going down the hall, don't ask me why.

By the way I have also seen these at civilian hospitals as well. I have seen one at Washington hospital center that I think was lost or trying to escape. (It was trying to go across the bridge to the parking garage but couldn't get past the door)
 
Some of the newer hospitals or newer wings (like USC) have separate droid-only hallways that they zip along, sight unseen. They're a long term investment but projections seem to show saving a LOT of money.
 
At my program CCF our basement is full of drones. These drones carry food, laundry, probably not medications. They have been around for a long time.
 
As an intern in the 90s, I got in a repeated head-on collision with one of these robots while taking a patient on a bed to MRI. I couldn't get around the bed in this tight hallway and the robot kept crashing into the front of my gomer's bed. I finally got the bed out the way and robot went on his merry way.
 
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