Gadgetory

twenty-five robots with different voices crossing corridor and names will be roaming the halls of the University of California San Francisco's new hospital relieving staff from tedious deliveries that allows our staff to focus on the things that people do so well caring decision making supporting the robots can carry up to 1,000 pounds and deliver six types of supplies lab specimens surgical instruments bed linens meals waste and medications there can be scheduled deliveries as well as on-demand the robots can maneuver independently communicating over Wi-Fi they could open doors and even call the elevators and travel to different floors some of the hallways here are nearly three football fields in length that is a lot of walking for hospital staff in just one of the reasons why they wanted to use robots to cover all that ground to do some of the heavy lifting when we made the decision to use the robotic courier it was based on three different tenets safety for our employees reliability because we have a schedule and then last but not least is the efficiency for example they can deliver 1,000 meals a day to patients all of the robots have the building's floor plans embedded into their systems they're also outfitted with more than 30 sensors a camera sonar lasers and infrared those four components actually allow the robot to sense the size of a corridor to make sure the right patient gets the right meds the pharmacy BOTS have built-in fingerprint sensors so only authorized staff can access them they require a specific ID for each medication that goes into the robot and then a specific ID for each medication that comes out only proper use reliable use of the technology by people is what makes it safer the staff are voting on names and how they should be decorated while the robots won't be rolling up to a patient's bedside that should help with their bedside manner in San Francisco I'm Kara Tsuboi cnet.com for CBS News you