iRobot
engadget, one of the blogs I read when I should be finishing
that article about therapeutic misconception my lunch, reports on a new kind of threat from computers in healthcare settings: robots that attack patients.
nobody is quite sure what 
prompted poor, mild-mannered Waldo (who gives robots named like Waldo?) — a lowly medicine-delivering bot — to run amok and terrorize the cancer ward. Waldo apparently blazed past the pharmacy and blew into the radiation oncology examining room where a physician was treating a cancer patient — and wouldn’t leave (wouldn’t leave? Don’t these things have an off switch?). It was enough to prompt the patient to flee the room in terror. What could disturb a robot so deeply? Messy breakup with Emma the nursebot?
comments
Why name this robot "Waldo"? A waldo is a gadget that can be operated remotely. IIRC, the name originaged in a Heinlein story, I think about a mad genius named Waldo who perpetrated his evil via remote-controlled machines, thingies, etc. I could be wrong about the origin, but that is how "waldo" is used today.
- by jean on Jun 15, 2005 at 9:55 PM | link
"Waldo" is, no doubt, named after the robotic attachments that were first described by Robert Heinlein in one of his early sci-fi stories.
In his use of the term, remotly operated "hands" would copy the movements of a human hand in a sensor glove. These attachments were called "waldoes".
- by Mike Endres on Jun 21, 2005 at 4:35 PM | link
Robots are becoming more and more "human" every day. This can have positives, but when a robot can attack and harass people, its crossing the line. People should know where robots and feelings are going too far.
- by aarone on Mar 9, 2006 at 2:27 AM | link