Remember Rosie in The Jetsons? It was an animated show first made in the 1960s and reprised in the 1980s to be the Space Age equivalent of the Stone Age The Flintstones. If you're familiar with The Jetsons, you will also note some similarities with the characters and theme music of the much more Modern Age The Simpsons. Rosie was the robot housekeeper to the Jetson family - George, Jane, Judy and Elroy and dog Astro. Rosie does all the housework, some of the parenting and dispenses discipline, advice and medicine.
And now, a Rosie-esque figure is coming to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) to help patients and staff.
NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner announced on Sunday that RNSH would become the first hospital in Australia to use the robots - less like a 'Rosie' and more like an automated guided vehicle - to transport food, linen and other supplies around its new acute services building.
Every day the robots will deliver and collect about 3,600 meal trays, hundreds of clean and dirty linen items and other waste from around the hospital.
"Not only will they assist staff to do their jobs more efficiently without the risk of painful injuries, they will reduce accidental cross-contamination of goods during transport," Ms Skinner said.
Royal North Shore's 13 robot guided vehicles, which cost $4 million in total, have arrived from Germany and will be operational later this month.
The flatbed-styled vehicles are designed to slide under trolleys for safe, quiet and efficient transport of supplies around the hospital.
They will travel in designated lifts and are equipped with flashing lights, turn signals and audible voice technology to alert people as they approach.
But unlike Rosie, there's no plans - yet - for them to dispense medicine or enter clinical areas.
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The flat yellow machine is an automated guided vehicle robot in use in a hospital in Germany.
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