“Buddy”, the robot that improves the daily life of hospitalized children
Thanks to technology, robots are able to do more and more things. Improve productivity, but also create social bond, which seems surprising. As part of an experiment conducted at the Toulouse hospital, a robot that allows sick children to stay in touch with their family environment is tested. His name is boyfriend and RTL met him for you.
Every day, for a month in the Dagi family, around 5 p.m., boyfriend the little robot comes into action with Claude, the father: “We are going to connect with Gabin who is 100km away in Toulouse, at the hospital, in his room.” he explains. “Hello son, are you okay?”
boyfriend is also dynamic. It is remotely controlled by Gabin who leads it in front of the house aquarium. “Do you see your fish?” Asks the father then. “He called his fish Bernard, it’s his favorite. He’s still in a sterile room which must be 10m2, so boyfriend, allows him to to find oneself in the universe which knows well, that is, his house. It allows us to accept this isolation. “
Buddy allows him to find himself in the universe he knows well.
Claude, Gabin’s dad
Now head to the playroom where Gabin usually spends long moments with Valentin, his 10-year-old big brother. “He keeps asking me questions. It also misses (note: Gabin). It’s boring without him.” he asserts. But thanks to boyfriend, Valentin is also reassured, hence the robot’s interest in siblings.
Victorine Laumond is a psychologist in the oncology department of the children’s hospital in Toulouse. “These times of hospitalization, they are often experienced in very terrifying ways in the representations that children have at home. The use of boyfriend, it still allows them to to desecrate a little what is played in the hospital and to feel they too, actor and implied in the disease of their brother or their sister. ”explains this psychologist.
Currently, boyfriend won the heart of Gabin and all his family. “I think it’s 40 even 50% of the cure because morale is there. When the morale is there, the rest follows. “Confides Gabin’s dad. In two weeks, it is with this morale of steel that Gabin should be. back in the family home.
