The Record of North Jersey reports about Mr. Rounder, a mobile robot at Hackensack University Medical Center, that allows doctors to make patient rounds via teleconference:
It was a casual Friday at the hospital, and Mr. Rounder wore his white doctor’s smock with the collar open.
On his way into Room 3001, Mr. Rounder bounced off the door frame but recovered in time to greet the patient, Bruce Davidson, and his wife, Marsha.
The RP-6 robot, called Mr. Rounder by co-workers, looks like a portable television set mounted atop an industrial floor buffer. The smiling face on its 15-inch TV screen on this day was that of Davidson’s physician, Dr. Garth H. Ballantyne, chief of minimally invasive surgery at the hospital.
Ballantyne was in his office on another floor in another building of the hospital monitoring the Davidsons through a tiny camera on Mr. Rounder’s “head”; images were transmitted back to Ballantyne’s laptop.
He commanded the robot from a laptop computer on his desk, over the Internet and the hospital’s wireless system. The battery-powered device rolls along on three billiard-size polyurethane balls and digitally “walks and talks” in real time.
The Davidsons and their robo-doc conferred in the room like it was any post-operative examination. Mr. Rounder’s bedside manner is personal and professional, if you don’t mind having a consult with the Mars rover.
Mr. Rounder is the product of InTouch Health of Santa Barbara…
P.S. The question has been raised whether Mr. Rounder has tied up Mrs. Marsha Davidson. Who knows…
