As some of Doctor Who’s most formidable enemies, you would expect the Cybermen to try to turn humans into an android army – not help out in care homes and hospitals.
These gentle robots are not as evil looking as the TV characters. They were created to help fill staffing shortages in certain sectors.
Beomni 1.0 will be revealed for the first-ever time to the public this week at Las Vegas’ 2022 Consumer Electronics Show.
Although it is small enough to grab a handful of salt from the table, its strength allows it to lift as much as 30kg (4 t 10 lb). It is initially controlled by remote humans but its AI brain eventually will be able to complete tasks autonomously.
Beomni has already been tested at a hospice in Colorado – where over three days it took temperatures, looked into mouths with a tongue depressor, and even danced with patients to cheer them up.
Are friends electric? Tested robot in hospice
Robot hands have opposable thumbs and can do delicate tasks such as opening bottles tops or injecting people with needles.
The four-wheeled vehicle can travel on all terrains, including snow, mud, and sand. Beyond Imagination, the inventors of Beomni believe that it will be able work in warehouses and pick fruits as well as perform dangerous electrical repairs. American scientist Harry Kloor invents the invention.
He was born with leg problems and was told that he would need braces throughout his entire life. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a robot.
His physical issues were overcome and he became an expert in the martial arts.
Bright spark: Beomni can safely repair electric cables
Since he was seven years old, Kloor has made it his “life’s mission” to build robots capable of doing good. According to Dr Kloor who advised Nasa as well, the Daily Mail, “The notion that AI would take over the world, and then attack humans, is quite absurd.”
He claimed that his invention could have saved the pandemic.
He said, “If human talent can be moved around the globe instantly using a robot to occupy it, there’s an endless number of things that you can do.”
“The Covid crisis has left the world without enough medical staff. Were my robots distributed around the world, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives or more, because rather than risk infection, doctors and nurses would be able to be popped into the robot – and treated them.’
Beomni will be available on the market within the next few years. It currently costs around £110,000 but would drop to roughly £50,000 when it goes into mass production.
Future space exploration could be made easier by the robot, which will also carry out microgravity experiments while the researchers are still on the ground.
Terrible: Cybermen attack London during a Doctor Who episode in 1968