Posted on 01/24/2007 10:30:44 AM PST by Dark Skies
Swarms of intelligent robots that can clean, tidy and even attend to patients remotely could revolutionise the provision of healthcare in hospitals.
The European team of scientists behind the development hope the robotic nurses could be put to work in hospitals within three years, helping to patrol and monitor wards, dealing with problems and easing the burden on hospital staff.
Newcastle is one of four UK universities involved in the EU-funded project, known as IWARD, which is being co-ordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. The others are Cardiff, Dublin and Warwick.
Dr Robert Bicker, a senior lecturer in the School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, who, along with Dr John Hedley, Ben Towell and Ron Jamieson of the Resource Centre for Innovation and Design, are designing how the robots will move around.
In an interview with The Journal, Dr Bicker said: 'These robots would communicate with each other in what's called a swarm. They would have their own intelligence and, in theory, be able to optimise what they're all doing.
'We would hope they could do cleaning. MRSA is a major issue, and if it were possible to manage a robot to routinely clean wards, walls and windows in the hospital, that would serve a very useful purpose', he added.
The team hope to be able to test their creation on wards at the Freeman Hospital in around three years' time.
As stated above...these are not nurses. If anything they are robotic nursing assistants.
that would be fine if they could respond halfway intelligently and didn't put ya through endless 'choose from the following menu' only to be led to yet another menu with 8+ choices - ad infinitum.
sponges don't take baths silly
Bump for later reading
right now our choice is the automated button hell or raj going by the name "John Smith" who is very sorry to hear we have having a problem with X and would be very happy to go through the script to solve your problem with X.
lol i know it- they're always so helpful those 'damn dirty robots' as Heston would have said.
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