Robots To Get Dental Healing

By James Lister Sinfield

Picture the scene: you’re visiting the dentist and rather than the usual fearful trepidation of “The Dreaded Chair”, you feel calm, relaxed and assured that rather than facing pain and agony at the hands of a sadist, you will receive a gentle oral caress, the dentist alive to your needs and responding accordingly. Could a Japanese robot help turn this fantasy into reality?

If you are one of the multitudes who detest visiting the dentist, then help maybe at hand in the form of a shapely humanoid robot designed by the Japanese robot company Kokoro.

The somewhat unimaginatively named Simroid costs a whopping £330,000 and was unveiled last week at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo as an aid for trainee dentists to know when their patients are in discomfort. The life-sized feminine humanoid robot responds to dental treatment in a way that mimics the response of a genuine patient. Saying ‘That's painful!’ when her teeth are treated too roughly, and ‘Ouch!’ at appropriate moments. She even blinks, squints, frowns and twitches throughout the treatment and her chest simulates breathing by rising and falling, however, claims that Simroid giggles coquettishly when nitrous oxide is administered are sadly unfounded.

The robot is an alarmingly accurate replica of an attractive woman, complete with realistic hair, and pink sweater. The theory being that would-be male dentists respond better to a female patient than a male one. Simroid relies on the fact that we humans cannot help but react to an emotional response of a fellow human, and it appears as though we are quite readily fooled into what constitutes a ‘fellow human’.

This fact was explored in David Levy’s recent book Love and Sex with Robots in which he speculates that in the not too distant future we’ll all have intimate relations with androids of formidable sexual prowess. Interestingly though, Simroid clearly does not have sex on her mind, to the extent that she has a tracking system fitted underneath her lovely pink sweater to discourage would-be Lothario dentists from any inappropriate contact.

Dentists generally receive a pretty poor press and very few of us can say we have had positive experiences in their hands, but whether or not this android is the development that dentists need to overcome the stigma associated with their profession remains to be seen.

See what you think. Here's the video: