Researchers to Develop Prototype of Robotic Scrub Nurse

Researchers at Purdue University are working on a prototype of a gesture-driven robotic scrub nurse to help nurses in hospitals to perform their technical duties or for replacing the scrub technician.

The main purpose of the robot will be to perform certain repetitive tasks that are crucial during a surgery. The robot must be capable of handing over the surgical instruments to the surgeon and monitoring the number of instruments being used. The robot will help in the reduction of careless medical errors such as leaving instruments inside a patient's body.

A research team under the supervision of Juan Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue, is making the robot "intelligent" by creating the necessary software. Wachs, who specializes in robotics and machine and computer vision, will guide students to write the code, perform the experiments, validate the system, review the results and compare various alternatives.