Can a Robot Feel Your Dental Pain?

A Yahoo News story today featured a new Japanese robot that will mumble "ouch" when a dental student touches a nerve.

Things have come a long way from working on a typodont! It was a set of plastic teeth attached to a pole that we would attach to our bench and practice on. It was very awkward and the teeth never had the same consistency as real enamel or dentin.

The robot is a great teaching aid for dental students to simulate a real patient from the beginning of their training. Incorporating robots and better simulation aided with computers is the way to better train dentists. This is just beginning of technology being incorporated in education. Kudos to the Japanese!