KENTUCKY: Robotic nurse assistant to help with routine tasks
With support from the National Science Foundation, roboticist Dan Popa and a team of engineers and nurses at the University of Louisville are developing a new generation of assistive robots designed to help nurses care for patients in a hospital. Adaptive Robotic Nurse Assistants are being designed to help with routine tasks for patients, such as delivering items, taking them for walks, and alerting nurses to emergencies.
From University of Louisville: A UofL team of Engineers and nurses are building a robot to be a nurses' assistant - to take over the time consuming tasks that keep nurses away from direct patient care. Nursing faculty Cynthia Logsdon, along with co-investigators Heather Mitchell and Diane Chlebowy are collaborating with engineering faculty Dan Popa to design a new generation of robots to assist nurses in the hospital setting. Logsdon emphasizes the robot is not meant to replace the high-level critical thinking and analysis required by a nurse, but it could assist with more routine tasks such as fetching water for a patient.