(Photo: Imperial College London)
Do you remember Patrick, the proctology exam simulation dummy? He wowed the world with his almost lifelike representation of the human rectum. But in the intervening year, scientists and engineers have made even greater advances in the field of human rectal simulation.
Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a robotic rectum that feels almost exactly like the real thing. It provides responsive haptic feedback so that as the medical student searches for and examines the prostate, the flesh-like rectum responds appropriately.
Additionally, this robotic rectum is programmable. Not all rectums are alike and doctors have to get used to the feel of different rectums. This one can provide that same variety of experiences. Quartz reports:
Doctors learn what a cancerous prostate feels like through experience. The trouble is that people don’t easily volunteer for such a probing. In the UK, there’s just one registered “rectal teaching assistant,” as volunteers are known. […]
Rectums come in all shapes and sizes, so the device presented at the Eurohaptics conference this week can be programmed, allowing the anatomy to be altered each time. The current simulation is based on scans of the UK’s only rectal teaching assistant.
-via David Thompson
And because someone has to post a joke here, I'll say the following: Rectum? I wasn't even driving!