This Hyper-Real Robot Will Cry and Bleed on Med Students
WiredHal the robot boy is convulsing. “I've seen several nurses be like, ‘Whoa it moves!’” says Marc Berg, medical director at the Revive Initiative for Resuscitation Excellence at Stanford. “I think that's kind of similar to the idea that if you've driven a car for 20 years and then you got a brand new car, you're kind of amazed initially.” The company behind this $48,000 robot boy is Gaumard Scientific, which has been developing medical simulators since the 1940s, beginning with synthetic skeletons and anatomical figures. To get the expressions right, the company’s engineers worked with pediatricians to fine-tune how an angry or happy child’s face really moves—muscles contracting here, brows furrowing there. To avoid a faceplant into the uncanny valley, Hal’s designers decided not to give him blemishes or freckles—he has to convince trainees he’s real enough to be an effective tool, but not so real that he becomes a distraction.
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