Robots Are the New Guinea Pigs for Dental Students

Seated within the dentist chair, mouth wide open, with fingers clenching the arms of the chair, while the dentist pokes and prods is something that all of us have undergone at 1 time or the other. Whilst this is really a bad enough experience, what could be even worse is beginners trying to develop skills by utilizing individuals as guinea pigs.

Japan, a country, which breathes and thrives on innovation, seems to have an answer for even this. A new guinea pig, in the guise of a robot, will be the new dummy patient that permits dental students to perform on a life-like patient, which wriggles and squirms and squeals, without having to actually work on a real human becoming, thus providing relief to the tormented and the tormentor.

Realizing that medical ability and ability has its initial roots in failures, a collaborative team, consisting of researchers from Showa and Waseda Universities, a Southern Japanese developer; and a leader in humanoid production, Atsuo Takanishi, created a robot with human-like characteristics.

Figuring that persons would only understand from their failures, staff and students at Showa University have been practicing on the humanoid and have apparently benefited by the experience. More than 80 students have already used the robot and many more are expectantly awaiting their chance to have a go with Hanako, as the robot was called.

Utilizing a robot for a patient, instead of a human being, had quite a few advantages, the main one being that it allowed dental and orthodontic students to make many mistakes, from which they could understand.

Hanako is for all practical purposes just like a human being. She conveys her discomfort when prodded and poked too tough or in the wrong spot, expresses her pain in appreciable measure, and in fact is able to even roll her eyes, and dribble like a real person.

During the initial presentation, Hanako went through the phases in exactly the same manner as human beings did. Initially all smile, she experienced severe discomfort when the student began drilling the artificial teeth in her mouth, and really communicated when the procedure hurt. In response to the student query regarding pain, the robot raised her arm if she suffered discomfort, and was able to move her eyes, jaw and tongue, like real patients did. So authentic was Hanako, that she was in a position to reproduce even the organic fatigue and sag of patients at the end from the process.

Hanako is all steel and plastic, but really responsive as a patient. When being worked on, the humanoid automatically reacts to movements that would cause a human discomfort, and external controls can make the situation more lifelike by adding bouts of sneezing, coughing or replicating organic reflexes that human beings are endowed with. The receptors inside the robot's mouth make it seem as vulnerable as real patients.

While Hanako is really a great thing for that practice of dentistry in general ,as students get the sense of what individuals are really undergoing, the actual trauma associated with drills and fillings, what Hanako cannot realistically create is the common loathing that people have for that dentist chair and also the ability to squirm as spasmodically as human beings do.

Seated within the dentist chair, mouth wide open, with fingers clenching the arms of the chair, while the dentist pokes and prods is something that all of us have undergone at 1 time or the other. Whilst this is really a bad enough experience, what could be even worse is beginners trying to develop skills by utilizing individuals as guinea pigs.

Japan, a country, which breathes and thrives on innovation, seems to have an answer for even this. A new guinea pig, in the guise of a robot, will be the new dummy patient that permits dental students to perform on a life-like patient, which wriggles and squirms and squeals, without having to actually work on a real human becoming, thus providing relief to the tormented and the tormentor.

Realizing that medical ability and ability has its initial roots in failures, a collaborative team, consisting of researchers from Showa and Waseda Universities, a Southern Japanese developer; and a leader in humanoid production, Atsuo Takanishi, created a robot with human-like characteristics.

Figuring that persons would only understand from their failures, staff and students at Showa University have been practicing on the humanoid and have apparently benefited by the experience. More than 80 students have already used the robot and many more are expectantly awaiting their chance to have a go with Hanako, as the robot was called.

Utilizing a robot for a patient, instead of a human being, had quite a few advantages, the main one being that it allowed dental and orthodontic students to make many mistakes, from which they could understand.

Hanako is for all practical purposes just like a human being. She conveys her discomfort when prodded and poked too tough or in the wrong spot, expresses her pain in appreciable measure, and in fact is able to even roll her eyes, and dribble like a real person.

During the initial presentation, Hanako went through the phases in exactly the same manner as human beings did. Initially all smile, she experienced severe discomfort when the student began drilling the artificial teeth in her mouth, and really communicated when the procedure hurt. In response to the student query regarding pain, the robot raised her arm if she suffered discomfort, and was able to move her eyes, jaw and tongue, like real patients did. So authentic was Hanako, that she was in a position to reproduce even the organic fatigue and sag of patients at the end from the process.

Hanako is all steel and plastic, but really responsive as a patient. When being worked on, the humanoid automatically reacts to movements that would cause a human discomfort, and external controls can make the situation more lifelike by adding bouts of sneezing, coughing or replicating organic reflexes that human beings are endowed with. The receptors inside the robots mouth make it seem as vulnerable as real patients.While Hanako is really a great thing for that practice of dentistry in general ,as students get the sense of what individuals are really undergoing, the actual trauma associated with drills and fillings, what Hanako cannot realistically create is the common loathing that people have for that dentist chair and also the ability to squirm as spasmodically as human beings do.

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