Collaborative Robot as Scrub Nurse

Abstract

Under-staffing of nurses is a significant problem in most countries. It is expected to rise in the coming years, making it challenging to perform crucial tasks like assessing a patient's condition, assisting the surgeon in medical procedures, catheterization and Blood Transfusion etc., Automation of some essential tasks would be a viable idea to overcome this shortage of nurses. One such task intended to automate is the role of a 'Scrub Nurse' by using a robotic arm to hand over the surgical instruments. In this project, we propose to use a Collaborative Robotic-arm as a Scrub nurse that can be controlled with voice commands. The robotic arm was programmed to reach the specified position of the instruments placed on the table equipped with a voice recognition module to recognize the requested surgical instrument. When the Surgeon says "Pick Instrument", the arm picks up the instrument from the table and moves it over to the prior defined handover position. The Surgeon can take over the instrument by saying the command "Drop". Safe pathways for automatic movement of arm and handover position will be predefined by the Surgeon manually. This concept was developed considering the convenience of the Surgeon and the patient's safety, tested for collision, noisy environments, positioning failures and accuracy in grasping the instruments. Limitations that need to be considered in future work are the recognition of voice commands which as well as the returning of the instruments by the surgeon in a practical and safe way.