Panasonic’s Hospital Delivery Robot To Begin New Trials In 2011

New trials for Panasonic's Hospital Delivery Robot (HOSPI) are set to take place in January, 2011 at the Matsuhita Memorial Hospital in Japan. Since its creation back in 2004, HOSPI has been upgraded with some new improvements. It now has the ability to ride elevators all by itself, can plot its own route through a building, and has better obstacle detection.

The question still remains, do people want to robots involved with medical care? (Read: This Robot Can Wash Your Hair While Squeezing Out Your Brains)

The sales of this robot are not doing so hot. So they gave it some updates and let Matsuhita Memorial Hospital put it to trial. For the record, Matsuhita is Panasonic's parent company. If it fails the trials, the future of HOSPI is extremely bleak.

The hospital plans to start the trials by deploying 2 robots that will work the nigh-shift. In April, 2011, they hope to deploy another 2 robots for the daytime.

The robots will be used to help transport drugs throughout the hospital. The work will supposedly ease a big burden for hospital employees that normally have to slave the drugs around. Is this the future of medical care? Using robots to do the slave work?
 [PlasticPals]

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