POOLESVILLE, Md. (WUSA9) -- A Maryland 5th grader who underwent about four weeks of radiation went back to school on Monday for the first time in about a month, and it may be thanks to a robot.
Peyton Walton of Poolesville was diagnosed with Undifferentiated Embryonal Sarcoma, a rare form of liver cancer, in late June. Doctors told the 10-year-old girl she’d have a 30 to 50 percent chance of survival.
“I wanted whatever time she had to be as full as possible,” Lynn Schaeber, Peyton’s mother, said.
A parent at Peyton’s former New Jersey school told Schaeber about Cisco’s video conferencing technology. Then she found out about Double Robotics, a company that makes an iPad-based telepresence robot called Double.
And those discoveries became Peyton’s robot, who is rolling around Poolesville Elementary School. The robot is named PAVS, which stands for Peyton’s Awesome Virtual Self.