Robots help deliver meals for patients

More news from the Robot Revolution. Robots are delivering meals to hospital patients.

This is the incredible fleet of robots helping to provide food for almost 1,000 patients at a new £430 million super hospital.

Southmead Hospital in Bristol has deployed a fleet of 12 automatic guided vehicles to deliver meals to its 950 patients.

The droids, which start work at 10.15 every morning, are capable of opening doors, operating lifts and picking up food without any human assistance.

They transfer chilled dishes to kitchens scattered around the hospital, where they are heated and then served to patients.

After completing their rounds, the machines return to their charging stations until they are called upon again for the next meal.

www.westerndailypress.co.uk...

These robots will just get more efficient over time. You don't have to pay them or worry about them getting sick, slacking off or missing days.

Elderly do not have many human contacts during a day with this even less. Long live the money..

a reply to: neoholographic

That is step 1.
Step 2 is for robot to go work and bring me money.

...But then the robot will need maintenance, so portion of his paycheck will go there. Robot will get smarter and will want some stuff of his own and another portion of his paycheck will go to that. Robot will want upgrades and portion of my paycheck will go to that. Robot will want to move into a bigger place to live and another portion of my paycheck will be gone. At this point i will have to divorce my robot since losing half is better than losing everything.

a reply to: neoholographic


Yes, but will they continue to think robots are great when Skynet is melting their faces?

I think not.

Delivering food or delivering pain is all the same to them.

originally posted by: dollukka
Elderly do not have many human contacts during a day with this even less. Long live the money..

Sometimes when they are in a hospital, they won't ask for things because they feel they are being too much of a burden on the staff. Now imagine if this system could make and deliver cups of coffee/tea and biscuits on demand.

There are already robot systems to handle the delivery of prescriptions, linen and biopsy systems. Pneumatic tubes are still the preferred system for transporting samples.

originally posted by: dollukka
Elderly do not have many human contacts during a day with this even less. Long live the money..

I agree.

Hey just give em the new IPAD or mobile computer and they'll be texting all day or talking to SIRI for companionship :/ Better yet, install a TV in their room. Give'em a phone. Eh, technology has hte solution... Or does it?

originally posted by: Osiris1953
a reply to: neoholographic


Yes, but will they continue to think robots are great when Skynet is melting their faces?

I think not.

Delivering food or delivering pain is all the same to them.

We live in a highly technical world. I sometimes find myself thinking like a robot. Won't robots do well in a controlled predictable society of this sort? Maybe we're all turning into robots, and that's why robots replace us.

People we'll learn to like robots because we're robots!?

It's kind of like texting. It's very unnatural and uncomfortable at first. After a while you get used to it. And you start talking like this "Gvme fd? LOL! Tvm." So we went from a very rich language to a very reduced language. But this is just the start. How about the automated phone systems that're so popular nowadays? "Press 1 for Shop, Press 2 for Website, Press 3 for..." And what about shopping? These days you just make the machine beep until everything is in your bag. Then you use the techscreen to pay. No humans. No talking. Just grab your money and receipt. It's very technical. The missing element is the human at the cash register. YOu know, the one you'd sometimes talk to? And don't get me started on how technical and difficult some of the websites are to use when shopping or trying to fix a computer problem. So many buttons and numbers and things to confuse me.

Gahh! Just put the chips in my head and take the frustration away! And suddenly one day I look in the mirror and... I'm half-man half-computer! Like I got a computer in my hand, I got one on my eyes, I got em in my brain!

All heil th4e chip! We can't live without it!

a reply to: jonnywhite

My post was of course light hearted hyperbole.

Just the same, I am so anti AI development it's not even funny. Conscious machines would eventually find us to be imperfect, weak, incomplete, a threat to the planet, or just intolerable. I imagine that would be the end for us. I would personally murder the first conscious AI. I love the humans of this planet and do not hate any human race, but I am openly racist towards any potential future race of machines. I'm pretty strange ... and well aware of this fact.