Xenex’s germ-zapping robot
Credit: Xenex

With the official Ebola death toll approaching 5,000, scientists are increasingly concerned with exploiting all possible ways of fighting this deadly disease. While the biggest labs around the world are working on a vaccine that will hopefully exterminate Ebola once and for all, roboticists are developing more unconventional ways of preventing the spread of the disease.

Recently, a lot of media attention has been focused on Xenex, a San Antonio-based company, which has developed a robotic assistant that helps medical professionals remove traces of infectious diseases, such as ebola, left in hospital premises. Even better, the robot can fence infections out 24/7 with 99,9 % efficiency, thus preventing any potential delays in the operation of a hospital.

The robot does that by firing powerful ultraviolet pulses that wipe out all nasty viruses and bacterias sneaking in the corners of hospital rooms. And while the technology of scrambling viral DNA with ultraviolet light is not particularly new, the idea of a roboticized Ebola killer is certainly to everybody’s liking.

But here is the catch: it does not take a genius to realize that Xenex’s machine has no more right to be called a robot than any other piece of medical equipment. What Xenox has developed is not an autonomous Roomba-like Ebola hunter. Essentially, it is a wheeled cart with a programmable ultraviolet lamp, and, although there is no doubt about its effectiveness in killing Ebola and other germs, we should choose words properly.

Does this mean, however, that robotics has nothing to offer in the biggest recorded outbreak of the virus?  Fortunatelly, the answer is no. Even existing medical robots have a huge potential for fighting diseases like Ebola, but deciding how to effectively use them in harsh conditions, such as those in West Africa, is a complicated issue.

In an attempt to clarify how robots can contribute to the ongoing battle, the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University is organizing a policy workshop on Safety Robotics for Ebola Workers. The workshop will help identify what robots can do in order to minimize human contact with the virus, detect the virus and provide expert consulting to those who contracted the virus. You can learn more about the upcoming workshop HERE.

Robots that perform surgery have been around for a while. The da Vinci system, which has been in use since the 90s, electronically translates a surgeon’s hand movement into much smaller movements which can manipulate the tiny instruments used for the surgery. In this same manner the system also detects and eliminates any natural tremors in the surgeon’s movement .

The smaller and more precise incisions that are realized by robotic surgery allow for faster and less painful recovery of patients. These types of robots have reduced expenditures  in many ways,  nevertheless,  the growing strain on healthcare systems of nations around the world requires governments to look for more ways to cut costs often resulting in a reduction of valuable services.

Lengthy hospital stays are costly and often very uncomfortable, particularly for young patients. The Children’s Hospital in Boston is carrying out a 5 robot pilot program where robots are sent home with a child after surgery to deliver extra care. Instead of having to drive into major cities to see specialists several times a week, patients are able to stay at home while communicating with their doctors and nurses at the hospital via the robot. The robot is also capable of taking detailed pictures of post-surgery scars, sending them to back to the hospital for revision. Dr. Hiep T. Nguyen, director of the Children’s Hospital’s Robotic Surgery Research and Training Center thinks that robots like this could eventually replace hospital monitoring with home-based monitoring.

The hospital’s using robots in other areas too; the hospital’s food service team has welcomed six new robotic members. Using a detailed map of the hospital and navigation software that can plan routes and avoid obstacles, these bots are there to give staff a hand. “Our employees sometimes go up and down from the Cafe to patient floors 10 times during one meal,” stated Cathy Hudson, director of operations in Food Services ¨“Robots can relieve so much of the wear and tear on our people”.

You can read more about the hospital’s use of robots in the Boston Globe. Similarly, Hospital San Raffaelle in Milan, Italy has recently been involved in the European project  ALIZ-E. This project is testing the use of  social robots in the hospital care of children with metabolic disorders.

How can we make robots safe?  How can we make them perform their tasks effectively? Although these are among the most critical questions today’s robot engineers must address, recently, researchers have felt the need to delve further into some of the issues pertaining to the use of medical robots.  For example, what types of robot-human interaction are people comfortable with, how do we make robots communicate their intentions, and  how will people perceive them?