- Title: JAPAN: Humanoid robot the perfect patient for aspiring dentists
- Date: 29th March 2010
- Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (MARCH 25, 2010) (REUTERS) PATIENT ROBOT IN DENTIST CHAIR RESEARCH STUDENT SHUGO HAGA TELLING ROBOT THAT HE WILL BE WORKING ON TEETH PATIENT ROBOT HAVING TEETH WORKED HAGA WORKING ON PATIENT ROBOT PATIENT ROBOT WITH DENTISTRY TOOLS IN MOUTH PATIENT ROBOT HOLDING CLOTH IN HAND MORE OF HAGA WORKING OF PATIENT ROBOT PATIENT ROBOT SAYING "THAT HURTS" WHILE
- Embargoed: 13th April 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan
- Country: Japan
- Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVAB8LAWHJMY5GL2PZ1UG7YLTEYK
- Story Text: While few people like sitting in the dentist's chair, students aiming to fix people's smiles now have a new robot to practice on before they head to real patients.
Billed as the world's first large-scale practical use of a dental robot, 88 students at Japan's Showa Unversity took their tests to become dentists using the patient robot and the robot managed to survive without breaking throughout the tests.
The robot was developed by the department of Orthodontics at Showa University and stands at a height of 157 centimeters from head to toe.
It is the third generation of its kind, and was developed to allow students a way to practice on a life-like patient that would react without having to actually work on a real human being.
"Medical skill and ability is first built upon failures. One's skills only improve once they have failed once. Therefore, we figured that a robot is the only way that would allow students to learn from their failures without inconveniencing patients." explained vice director of Showa University Dental Hospital Koutaro Maki.
When being worked on, the robot automatically reacts to motions that would cause a human pain, but instructors can also use a separate touch-panel controller to inject unpredictable events such as sneezing, coughing or moving away from the instruments.
According to students such as 26-year-old Shugo Haga, this provides a much better replica of human reactions than other robots.
"This robot is quite different from those up to this point in that its movements are very close to that of a real patient. One actually feels the difficulty of working on it as a patient, as it has a very lifelike presence to it." Haga explained.
The robot also secretes artificial saliva to simulate the conditions of the human mouth, and even gets tired and attempts to close its mouth if the student takes too long.
While Showa University has been using humans up to this point to for its final clinical tests for students, the dental hospital hopes to let their new patient robot take over the task of being poked, drilled and prodded to train the next generation of smile makers. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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