There is a new type of robot, comfort companions, can fill with the comfort needs of people by offering the benefits of therapy animals without the downsides of germs, allergies, and cost. They are fur-covered which makes people especially children like to play with them. Most of them are used in the hospital to let special patients feel comfortable and to keep watch on their health situation. Those robots are very safety that they have been passed the medical device certified by the Food and Drug Administration.
There are several companies working on this technology such as the “Sporoutel’s Jerry the Bear” which are stuffed animals designed to work with an augmented reality phone app. Sproutel was the company who created the Jerry the bear which has worked on comfort companions for six years already. They founded it in 2012 to help kids cope with and learn about the illness. Jerry is one of the products they created which is a stuffed bear for kids diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Kids can learn to monitor blood sugar levels and give insulin shots to Jerry via an AR phone app. There is another product called My Special Aflac Duck also worked well on helping kids recure their mental illness. The duck can give children a chance to have control during a time when they seemingly have none by becoming the duck’s caretakers and feed the duck by the accompanying AR app.

When I read this article I feel it is so warm that I never thought that internet of things can help sick children to change their lives. They are the children who always stay in hospitals and lack love from the public. I think the comfort companions can really help with those children to let them feel the love and joy of lives which can give them hope to face the tough reality. And also, I like the AR phone app which helps kids to learn better about their body and disease with correct knowledge. The interaction between comfort companions can really make children or other patients to experience a real interaction with their own pets. I think maybe later on designers add a kind of checking system on the comfort companions will be better. Once patients play with it, the toy can tell how is every health relative data changes on patients’ bodies and then it can connect to the app on phone to tell the patients as well as the hospital at the first moment.
In a word, I really like this technology design and I hope it can be used in multiple hospitals in the future.

https://www.cnet.com/news/comfort-robots-aflac-duck-and-paro-seal-help-sick-people/