Robots may one day rise up to destroy us, but these days they’re proving quite helpful, especially in medicine. Robotic surgery has developed rapidly over the past decade, and now, robots are helping patients recover too.

For the last four months, Boston Children’s Hospital has been sending some of its young patients home with a sleek, two-wheeled robot called VGo (VEE-go). With a camera, audio equipment, and an LCD screen, VGo is essentially a teleconferencing system on wheels, and doctors at Boston Children’s are using it to check in on their young patients from afar.

Wow! And what's the biggest hangup? Spotty wi-fi coverage.

There’s been a lot of debate about how to get health-care costs down in America, but simple preventative measures like this should be a no-brainer. Signs, after all, are a lot cheaper than surgery.

In a fascinating short post at fastcoexist, Andrew Price writes of gains in physical activity achieved when a simple sign, Burn Calories, not Electricity, was placed near a building's elevators. The New York Times reports today that handwashing has been promoted effectively in England by placing signs reading Don't Bring the Toilet with You in restrooms. Makes you marvel at how much you can accomplish by choosing your words carefully.