Companies Test Robotic Nurse for Use in Local Hospitals

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology want to explore the concept of robotic nurses and the way it can revolutionize the medical industry.

The experiment conducted by researchers involves training a robot named Cody to help human patients in bed.

Cody was designed with an objective of either cleaning a patient's arm or touching it in order to comfort them. Researchers wanted to observe if patients reacted differently to each of his actions as the robot was trained in both the actions in a similar fashion.

Cody’s presence was welcomed by patients when the robot carried out a specific task like  cleaning wounds. On the other hand, the patients felt uncomfortable by the idea of letting the robot render general comfort. Researchers observed similar results even in the case of human nurses. It was also observed that patients felt uncomfortable if the robot spoke to them before touching their arm. Researchers couldn’t entirely establish the reason for the discomfort although they speculate reasons like the unexpected speech of robots. Robotic inventions like the RIBA robotic nurse and android nurses are currently being tested by several companies.