How social robots can impact society

We had an unusual speaker this time, and probably this is just a start of new trend, where speakers and guests will not only be of human origin.

This year’s summit gave us a chance to meet Petra the world's first health-screening robot, which stands for Prescreening Experience Through Robot Assessment in a commercial real-life setting.

We had an opportunity to see all forms this robot could have, how it changed faces, made jokes and had a very personal communication with the audience.

We also learned what this Robot will mean for the future of medicine and how much it will change health screening process for each and everyone.

Robots that we can interact with have been a staple of science fiction and childhood dreams for more than a century. But human-like ‘droids’ that can make autonomous choices and display emotion and empathy – like Star Wars’ C-3P0 – are still reserved to our imagination.

However, thanks to advances in technology, digital sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI), many ‘faceless’ robots – programmable devices that automatically perform complex and often repetitive tasks – are already infiltrating almost every aspect of our daily lives.

As technologies become increasingly powerful and more ‘human-like’, robots are also starting to impact on many other areas of our lives – including our healthcare.

More about PETRA, the social medical robot you can read here.