Penelope - the robot nurse

Have you heard of Penelope? I suppose it was my voice recognition program that I am playing with that reminded me of her. She is not a person, although she does assist doctors in performing operations. "Penelope" was developed by Surgeon Michael R. Treat and his team at Robotic Surgical Tech Inc. Penelope is able to perform tasks that are usually assigned to the scrub nurse. Using voice recognition Penelope is able to respond to a surgeon's request for an instrument, handing it to the surgeon with a robotic arm. A visual processing capability allows Penelope to retrieve the instrument as well. for safety the robot is able to keep track of the surgical instrument count reducing the number of instruments, sponges, ham sandwiches, and other oddities that have been known to be left inside of people after an operation.



Okay, so maybe no ham sandwiches, but sponges and instruments have reportedly been left inside of people after an operation.



The most recent mention I have been able to find for Penelope is from 2005. If anyone knows of a more recent article on this robotic nurse, I would be very interested in knowing the URL.