Gadgetory

with more than 5,000 deaths from Ebola it's become a difficult disease to contain because of its contagious nature we're going to have to stay vigilant and we've got to make sure that we're working together at the encouragement of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy scientists are meeting in Massachusetts Texas Washington DC and at UC Berkeley see if robots can be of assistance so the great thing about putting a robot in there is that you could then basically keep people out of harm's way UC Berkeley robotics professor Ken Goldberg says in the coming months they're looking at whether telepresence robots like the ones created by in touch health could help doctors remotely diagnose an Ebola patient when you're trying to diagnose a patient there's a lot of nuance you want to be able to look from different angles look at different parts of the of the patient robots could also help with cleanup and decontamination though there's one major obstacle to overcome most robots have wheels well those can immediately get it contaminated and we don't know actually how to sterilize them because there's too many intricate moving parts in the long-term several years down the road Goldberg says the focus is on whether robots can assist in treating Ebola and other patients by inserting IVs can we use new imaging techniques to be able to find the vein more accurately and then robotic device that would actually be able to position a needle more accurately robots may also be tapped in the future to help with bio lab experiments involving contagious diseases the right now robots have a tough time perceiving transparent glass vials like beakers Goldberg says this current Ebola crisis is a wake-up call to accelerate technology the reality is that robots are not the capabilities are limited right now there's lots of research that needs to be done so we just want to set expectations that we're not this is not going to save the day but he says they hope to be ready for the next health crisis in San Francisco I'm Kara Tsuboi cnet.com for CBS News