Company creates medical robot that breathes, bleeds and even has a pulse

As an attempt to make medical training exercise more realistic, a new robot has been created for medical students to practice on, and it can cry, bleed, and even call for its mom, which also makes it a bit creepy.

Gaumard Scientific has created a five-year-old medical robot named HAL for medical students to train upon. The robot can respond to certain questions, follow finger with its eyes, convulse, bleed and it even has a pulse.

HAL is aimed to help students retain their knowledge better since the robot is as close to treating a real person without really using a human volunteer. The synthetic boy can replicate medical problems, cry tears, and shout for its mother, reported Business Insider.

Video Courtesy: Gaumard Scientific

HAL’s other functions also include anaphylactic shock, cardiac arrest, and also have its blood sugar, blood oxygen level, and carbon dioxide level measured. HAL’s pupils can also dilate when light is shone into its eyes. The robot can make realistic noises like breathing abnormally to replicate a collapsed lung or other suffering.

To get ready for really bad injuries and problems, HAL can be attached to real hospital machines and can also be shocked with a defibrillator. When HAL is awake it can be set to multiple various emotional states such as anxious, amazed, quizzical, angry and lethargic.  What’s more interesting is that HAL can even urinate, wrote Daily Mail.

“In certain situations such as anaphylaxis, his tongue will swell, his throat will swell,” Gaumard’s vice president James Archetto told Wired.

HAL is made realistic enough to help medical students with their studies, but not so realistic that it becomes too much traumatic to deal with when patients have to cut its throat to insert a tracheal tube.

John Eggers, Gaumard’s executive vice president, said, “Participants can perform a full range of emergency procedures including surgical airway, needle decompression, and chest tube thoracostomy with the highest degree of realism. It’s the closest experience to real world pediatric emergency care available today.”