Robotic health assistants are gradually making their way into teaching hospitals, but it’s arguable that none are quite as unique as Patrick, the talking butt robot.
Chatty robotic pals might be a long way from hitting stores, but doctors in universities are developing relationships with robotic patients that enjoy getting their robotic prostate examined and letting you know all about it.
Called Patrick, the robotic butt was developed by Dr Benjamin Lok as a prostate exam simulator to help trainee doctors come to terms with the reality that they will one day have to stick their hand up a person’s posterior to check the health of their prostate, while dealing with queries from worried patients.
Patrick, the robot butt. Image via IncrediblyRich/Twitter
To let the trainee doctors know how they’re doing, Patrick has a range of sensors embedded within his fragile body to see if they’re perhaps being a bit too vigorous with the examination.
Speaking to Geekosystem, Dr Lok even suggested that training like this could one day be done on the latest gaming consoles: “Consoles can easily provide the computational power to do training. With the console’s cheap price and fantastic computational power, they can be used for training.”
Imagine the news aftermath of Patrick and his robot butt being sold as a video game accessory? It would certainly take the heat off the GTA series for a while…
Prostate exam image via Shutterstock
