Robot receptionists introduced at hospitals in Belgium

Two Belgian hospitals have added an innovative staff member to their reception desks: humanoid robots called Pepper. The robots took up assistant reception duties at hospitals in Ostend and Liege on Monday.. Related: Man v machine: can computers cook, write and paint better than us? The humanoid assistant, which has a screen on his chest and a round head, is the first robot in the world to be used to greet people in a medical setting, his software creators said. Standing 140cm (4ft 7in) tall and equipped with wheels under his white frame, Pepper can recognise the human voice in 20 languages and detect if he is talking to a man, woman or child. In Liege the robot helper, who costs about 30,000 ( 23,000), will for the moment remain in the hospital's reception area. But at the AZ Damiaan hospital in Ostend, he can accompany visitors to the department they are looking for, said Raphaël Tassart of the Belgian firm Zora Bots which developed the software inside his robot brain.