A possible reenactment via Lego
If your doctor asked you to take a “spider pill”, would you? I would politely decline, mostly because it sounds terrifying. In reality, a spider pill does not contain actual spiders, but instead a tiny robotic camera (still terrifying). It looks like a pill, but after it is swallowed and reaches the stomach, colon or intestines its legs open and allow it to move within the patient. It is remote controlled, with a camera and a few lights on its head used to look for any signs of cancer.
Before the spider pill, a camera attached to a cable had to be fed into the patient, causing great discomfort and pain. The spider pill is much less intrusive and hopefully a pain free alternative to having a cable crammed down your throat (or maybe somewhere else). Is it possible that a spider pill could have any consequences?
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Hopefully you’ve already read the original post. More information has been found, and it really proves that personal robot helpers at home an in hospitals is a poor choice.
“For the first time, robots are safe enough and inexpensive enough to do meaningful work in a residential environment,” said Rod Grupen, a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst.
Robots really aren’t safe, they just aren’t sophisticated enough to cause trouble yet. Having these early generation robots accepted by the public means that more advanced robots will be well received. Those are the robots we need to worry about.
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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have received a 3 year, nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research communication between robots and the elderly and to eventually write software to allow robots to help healthy but immobile seniors.
On the surface this seems like a great plan; robots will be able to make the lives of those they are helping much better, while relieving family members of care duties. Ultimately, this will lead to complete integration of the robot helpers with the lives of the elderly.
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