Hal, a medical training robot that's just entering the commercial market, was "built to suffer," according to Wired.
The $48,000 robot, which takes the form of a young boy, is designed to simulate symptoms for medical students. He can cry and bleed, thanks to hydraulic systems in his body, and look angry or scared — a result of various motors connected to his face. If a medical student shines a light into his eyes, his pupils will shrink.
Hal offers a new solution for simulations, which medical students typically complete using mannequins or rubber dummies. The company that produces the robot, Gaumard Scientific, has been developing medical simulators such as synthetic skeletons since the 1940s, according to Wired. One of the company's other new robots, Victoria, gives birth to a baby robot.
"For so many years, the mannequins were really just rubber human likenesses with basically no interactivity at all," Marc Berg, MD, medical director at the Revive Initiative for Resuscitation Excellence at Stanford Children's Health in Palo Alto, Calif, told Wired.
One of the benefits of using Hal, by contrast, is to help medical students learn how to treat children — who may not always know how to verbalize their symptoms.
"They can often do that by facial expression," James Archetto, vice president of Gaumard Scientific, told Wired. Engineers from Gaumard Scientific worked with pediatricians to develop an accurate representation of these facial expressions, focusing on specific muscle contractions for various moods.
Medical students can hook Hal up to hospital machines, jolt him with a defibrillator or monitor his heart with an electrocardiogram. An instructor also can manipulate vital signs remotely from a tablet, and Hal can speak at the level of a 5-year-old.
With all of these features, a chief concern for instructors running these scenarios is ensuring they don't become too realistic and distressing for students. Even in simulations using rubber dummies, trainees can get overwhelmed, Dr. Berg said.
"We can amp the stress level up so high for the participants that people will cry, essentially have to drop out of the scenario," he told Wired. "I do think there's a good potential that we'll see more of that emotional type response when the mannequin is so realistic."