Question: If your robot is sucessful, will you create more??

Enda O'Connell answered on 15 Nov 2012:

Hi orlaandnoel

Although we helped in the design of Janus, by getting the engineers to make it in a way that it could be used by lots of different groups in many different ways, we didn’t actually make her. Once they had finished working on it in Germany, it was taken apart and shipped in huge containers to Galway, where it took two engineers 5 days to put it together. Then I was trained by a specialist for another 5 days in how to programme Janus to carry out different types of experiments. Then we started accepting projects from different scientists who wanted to use Janus for their research.

A lot of the projects we’ve worked on have involved looking for new drugs to kill cancer cells but we’ve also looked at helping people who undergo surgery recover faster and have some other new projects lined up for next year.

Since we’ve been using Janus, a number of companies have actually come to see her in operation, as they are interested in buying a similar type of robot. One was actually interested in buying three and joining them up together! I hope they have loads of space…