At Singularity University, a futuristic look at medical robots

Male Speaker: These are some robots that go inside you. Right? So you swallow a pill. Hopefully the prongs don't come out until after it's in the place where it needs to stay. You can have a little robot that leads a catheter where it needs to go or directs drug delivery to a particular place. Inside the eye already today you can have lenses that accommodate and I just got back from Copenhagen, an Ophthalmology meeting, the ophthalmologist are saying that in 15 to 20 years everyone will have not 20/20 vision, but 20/10 vision, and most people will have 20/8 vision, because that's the limit of the retina. The correction that you need to do there is not just focus, it's distortion. We're at the point where the really limiting factors for things like night vision are things like spherical aberration, and in fact to correct you may the way to 20/8 vision you have to consider things like every time you blink you leave ripples of tear on your cornea. And those ripples alone are enough to take you from a really nice 20/8 all the way up to a blurry 20/10 kind of vision. So what we're starting to talk about in Opthamology is a transition from repairing problems that have happened to people's eyes or vision issues to saying hey, I have normal vision, but I want to have supernormal vision. So people are going to start no longer being satisfied with normal. Exterior. This is an example of E legs, and in fact we're going to have our friend Ted, who I'm not seeing year yet, is going to come and demonstrate E legs for you in an hour or so. Walking paraplegia. If you -- with the same concept that normal's not good enough, you can take a body suit to give you supernormal strength. You can have dexterous arms, you can have smart feet. Telepresence. I think you all are pretty much aware of these things. You can have telepresence to advise someone in the OR, you can have telepresence at the bed side. I mention intuitive surgical, where we can -- you can do virtual evaluate telepresence to do surgery. Training and helpfulness. One of the common injuries for nurses is lifting patients. Forget about it. Get a robot to do that. Physical therapy assistance, training devices. Teach you how to deliver a baby with a robot trainer. Companionship.

Laughter

>> This is huge, right? So we already have robot pet companions, right? And we already have robot sex companions. And just like the Internets for porn, robots are going to be for sex. Just -- you need to be aware of that. It's in your future. About five years from now -- five years from now we're going to be seeing robot pets that do more than just be a toy. That actually do useful things, like pick up the house. Recognize you, get excited when you show up home after a day's work. Communicate that excitement to you back and forth, are trainable by you, and can even respond a little bit to your emotional state. If you're really excited, it will get really excited. 15 to 20 years we're going to be talking about companionship. Real companionship, and understanding, having conversations, something that will listen to your stories ad nauseam, and laugh at them at the right places every single time. We'll be talking about robots that do elder care and child care. We'll be talking about robots that are true companions for people who are lonely or have lost their loved one or simply want a companion.

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