RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 19

RANDOM AT LARGE

OPEN WIDE

They are always producing something new in America, and the latest development to come to our attention is a robot for dental trainees. It is interesting in itself, more interesting in the possibilities it may have of setting a trend. The dentists' dummy can say “ouch” and it can bleed, it can jerk its head when the drill touches a nerve and this may seem a negative sort of way to train dentists. It has replaceable teeth which can be drilled or filled, a tongue to impede the use of instruments and gums which will swell realistically if injections are not properly, made; it will

gather saliva, and its breath will fog the students’ mirrors. All very cunning. Marvellous training. From there, obviously, a doctor’s patient to wince, say “R” and produce a long and complicated and contradictory medical history. But all this should not be confined to the consulting room. In an age of specialisation, other trades should benefit by inventive genius. Selling petrol, for instance, is highly competitive now, and service station operators should be properly trained, with a robot which refuses to unwind its window and shouts instruction* through the

glass, which tenders nothing smaller than $lO notes, and which . automatically opens the bonnet just when the attendant is strategically placed to injure head or hand. The scope for development in training is almost unlimited. The tailor-under-instruction would benefit by a dummy of irregular shape which draws itself in at the touch of a tape measure, brays inanities and is ticklish. The barber . . . of course. A robot which bleeds, says "ouch," jerks its head, breathes beer fumes. But it wouldn’t need * tongue.