Pharm-Bot Goes On Rampage

budgenator writes "Seems that Waldo, a robot that delivers medication from the pharmacy to the nurses stations, went on an extracurricular journey at San Francisco's UCSF Medical Center last Tuesday. Waldo entered uninvited into a radiation oncology examination room disturbing a Doctor and Patient enough that it caused them to flee the room. Is navigating a hospital full of moving humans more difficult than navigating the DARPA grand challenge, or could it be that like his sibling robort Elvis, he just wanted to leave the building?"

Comments

Re:Rampage??

[Jason1729]

You're right, but unplanned excursion doesn't make a great headline that fuels people's fear of technology.

Degree of Difficulty?

[kingofalaska]

"Is navigating a hospital full of moving humans more difficult than navigating the DARPA grand challenge"

Seems like the answer is apparent: if it were less difficult to navigate a hospital full of moving humans, then wouldn't the pharmbot have been entered in the Darpa Challenge?

I'm guessing it's apples to oranges.

KoA

Navy to Test Shape Shifting Catamaran in Alaska

Register's ROTM humor bit

[SuperBanana]

Sadly, this story is more hype than fact. While the headline makes it seem like the robot is something you need insurance for, if you click through to the SF Chronicle article (and then scroll down a bit), you'll see that it was merely an accident, probably due to some bug in the navigation software.

It's just The Register, being The Register. I suppose the best way to describe the British press, in general, is the sort of furvor you see in FOX news, but AGAINST the government and corportations. To call them a bunch of sarcastic bastards is an understatement. American press takes a press release and reguritates it back to us. The British press take a press release, put their own story together about whatever it is, some background info, etc...quote a line or two and basically call it exactly like they see it, which is often, and accurately, either doubtful ("what a bunch of horse shit") or sarcastic ("right, and we'll all be using these things in our flying cars.") My examples are horrible- they're far better at it than that.

If you read their series Rage of The Machines, it's actually quite funny. Stuff about people getting trapped in public automatic-self-cleaning toilets are turned into people getting "swallowed" and "entrapped", having to be "freed from the machine's vices", etc. It's great stuff :-)

It's a more sophisticated version of the slashdot "zOMG skynet" comments...The Register keeps talking about when we'll basically have to start fighting off the machines with pitchforks in the streets.

What actually happened

[Dorm41Baggins]

Instead, the crazed automaton [...] careened past the drug depository before barging into a room in the hospital's radiation oncology department where an examination was in progress.

The psychotic pill pusher reportedly refused to leave, sending both doctor and patient fleeing for their lives.

In other words, the robot pushed its way into the room, realized it was lost and stopped moving. The doctor then left to go call a tech to get the thing out of the exam room. The patient, not particularly interested in waiting around in a small room with a large, seemingly unpredictable piece of machinery, decided to wait out in the hall for him to come back.

That's my guess, anyway.