Fiber the Cyber Dog is already a fan-favourite addition to the Grande Prairie Hospital Foundations clown program.
Fiber works directly with Butterfly the Clown. The two make their rounds across the pediatrics unit, allowing for children to see the robot dog in action.
Butterfly is able to control Fiber right from her phone, allowing for kids to play with him just like a standard remote-control vehicle.
There is not many thing’s that fiber cannot do, as he is able to; bark, whine, dance, sit, lay-down, jump, and can walk or move in any direction. Fiber can also learn how obey animal obedience hand signs as well.
The robot dog, and other’s like-it can also work as a personal dog for someone’s home, if needed.
Butterfly first got the idea to bring-in the dog after seeing the Children’s Hospital in Calgary having something similar. Butterfly pitched her idea to Global Cellulose Fibers. The company agreed that having Fiber would be very beneficial to kids that are ill, and gave a $10,000 grant to the foundation.
Fiber took-up most, but not all of the $10,000 grant, opening-up the opportunity to use a bit of funding for possible repairs.
Kids in the peds unit got the opportunity to see Fiber for the first time on Jan. 30th. Butterfly says that she is already getting plenty of requests to bring him to rooms in the unit.
“The kids absolutely love him, I get a lot of requests for kids to come see him. He is really positively-well invited into rooms, which I think is amazing,” she said.
Butterfly says when taking Fiber for walks around the hospital, he grabs the attention of just not kids, but also adults.
“One of the most amazing things about Fiber is that it’s just not kids that like him, it’s also people that are into technology, robotics, that like him.”
Butterfly expressed that getting Fiber was not too replace a real animal, and that they will continue to use both Fiber and a real animal.
