Thursday, January 04, 2007

Meet your future overlords

We're all doomed! Doomed, I tells ya! Why do I say this? Because the robots have begun procreating:
With South Korea's birth rate at its lowest ever, medical students are resorting to robots to practice bringing babies into the world.

Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul is the first institution in South Korea to use Noelle, a life-sized robot, and her "newborn" to give obstetric students experience.

"With this simulator training tool, we can conduct not only normal deliveries, but also complicated deliveries such as breech births, Caesarean deliveries," Professor Jung Eui told Reuters Television. "Students can practice in a very realistic situation with this mannequin."

Students regularly crowd around Noelle as she gives "birth." They take turns at monitoring her vital signs and at pulling the "baby" out of her body.

The newborn, also a robot, is equipped with lights on its hands and cheeks to indicate its health -- blue lights mean problems while pink lights signal all is ok.

[...]

Noelle was purchased for $20,000 from Miami-based Gaumard Scientific Co. Inc. in the United States. She was manufactured in 2000 and over 400 units have been sold in the United States.
If science fiction movies and declining educational standards have taught us anything, it's that by the time all those robot babies grow up, we'll be their flesh slaves. Those of us who survive the coming war between the cyborgs and the genetically-enhanced superhumans, anyway.

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