These 15 Robots Are Bringing In A Medical Innovation To Our World

So far, robots have developed so much that they are making big changes in our daily lives and interaction. With new discoveries made day by day, a future when we can have robots do most things will come soon.

It’s been a while since robots started replacing humans in working. However, it may be common sense to assume high-skill laborers like doctors or surgeons cannot be replaced, which turned out, not so true anymore.

Yes, you heard it right. Robots have achieved their position in the field of medical. It is believed that robots will soon play the role as frequent members at hospital and they can do lots of tasks such as measuring heart beats, scanning to reading medical notes or even making operation.

Although these innovations may be far in the future, robotics has already claimed its certain role in the medical field. The field is also experiencing a growing demand for procedures that are less invasive and better customized for different patients.

Still, we have to accept the truth that the advance of robotics will not turn into an apocalypse or will it make us immortal or make prostate exams more comfortable.

The point is, thanks to the development of robots, the medical field is taking big steps to a future with more effective diagnostics, less invasive and dangerous surgery, less waiting, lower rates of infection and raise rates of survival for mankind. How excited is that!

And here you go, the 15 most advanced robots used in medical field.

1. daVinci

First and foremost, the common robot used in surgery, which is also the standard for Robot Assisted Surgery.

Thought this robot is controlled by surgeons, you may be amazed by how it blurs the difference between a robot and a medical tool.

Run on daVinci system, the robot can precisely complete an operation with just some tiny cuts, reduce the amount of blood lost, help patients heal faster, and lower infection risk.

2.Sensory body parts replacement

Technology does not stop at just making something to replace the lost limb, but it has come to a level where people are ambitious about producing prostheses that are even better than nature.

Scientists at the MIT Biomechatronics laboratory have managed to create robotic limbs that use gyroscopes allowing them to self-track their positions and adjust joints 750 times a second at most.

Above all that, bionic skins and neural implant systems have been so developed that users can now have actual physical senses and control the artificial limb as naturally as a real one.

This innovation is such a huge step in unifying man and machine, as well as good news for over 2 million amputated people in just the US alone.

3.Robots conducting endoscopy

In an endoscopy process, a long wire with a small camera attached on is push into your body so that doctors can look for injuries, objects or disease signs. What an uncomfortable procedure!

Now, you don’t have to worry about any wire running through parts of your organs anymore, because small robots will do all the work and you may feel nothing annoyed in your body. This robot is small and thin, flexible which allow doctors to control it like an RC car can make it land at the necessary spot with absolute precision. Medineering is among several companies using this device, which can perform different tasks from tissue removing and examining to wound sealing.

Something which is even more impressive is a robot with the size of a 2.5-centimeter pill. You just need to swallow this robot like taking a pill, it will go down your digestive system and collect data as well as take pictures which are directly sent to a processor to be diagnosed.

4.Orthoses (AKA Exoskeletons)

This next robotic advancement does not only give the feeling of being Iron Man, but it also helps paralyzed people walk again. Miracle!

In addition, orthoses can help fixing bodies that are not formed correctly, or rehabilitate a people suffering from brain injuries or damages in their spinal cord. It assists muscles in movements that they are too weak to perform, which then help healing the damage.

Although most exoskeletons now require user input and pre-set movements, the innovations of neural interfaces will soon make these devices mind-controlled.

5.Targeted therapy micro-robot

As new as they are, these medical robots are highly promising. These robots use tiny mechanical pieces to place a therapy inside the body at the site we need.

We can use these robots for radiation delivery to a tumor, it can also be useful in decreasing a medication’s side effects by restrict the area it may influence to just where it is needed.

Hold your breath and see how these near-microscopic assistants get to the site. Among several methods available, scientists choose using magnetic fields in directing micro-bots with tiny helical tails to make them spin forward along blood vessels until it they reach the target.

6.Disinfecting robots

It’s not quite a shock if you go to hospital for treatment for some illness and leave with an additional one since hospital is actually extremely dirty.

The fact that there are numerous amounts of antibiotic substances in the hospital means there are certain bacteria that can survive antibiotics.

Therefore, making sure hospital rooms are clean is an essential task; however, it doesn’t mean we have to clean the rooms ourselves when all the work can be done by a robot.

The way disinfecting bots work is just like how a massacre is conducted, the difference is that microorganisms are the things getting killed. And the “attack” is done with high-powered UV rays as soon as the robot gets in the room where the patient has gone.

7.Robots in clinical training

If you know Operation, these training bots are just similar with that game, but in life-sized with realistic blood actions.

Though this one may seem a little less interesting, what we should focus on is its usefulness in medical training considering the fact that the process have been mostly done on job or human dead bodies.

8. Companion robots

Health care is not just about physically healing a body, it’s also helping the elder or people with mental disability who feel lonely and need stimulating.

With this patient group, it is necessary that regular check-ups be done, a procedure that can take so much time. But now we’ve got companion robots to solve both of the mentioned problems, and they are really helping people have a better life.

BUDDY is something close to Tamagachi-meets-Alexa but it can call an ambulance in case of emergency.

This robot can also make interactions with its owners that involve emotions and its innovation helped this extreme creation win the Best of Innovation Award in 2018.

9. Telepresence Robot Surrogates

It seems that telepresence surrogates are nothing strange since they have appeared on TV before, they are like iPads attached on the top of a mini Segway, which is silly.

Nevertheless, when it comes to medical field, telepresence surrogates becomes important in helping expertise contact with remote areas or locations from across the globe.

This advancement allows doctors in New York to talk with patients and physicians in the countryside of India, which means they can easily exchange knowledge and consult on diagnoses.

10. Robotic nurses

With loads of work to do and limited time, robotics nurses are really useful in helping human nurses and making things more efficient.

Most of what these nurse robots can do includes digital paperwork filling, vital signs measuring, and condition monitoring.

New robotics focus on replacing nurses in less important tasks such as moving carts and patient trolleys in hospitals or taking blood.

11. Pharma-Botics

You can now buy prescribed medicine from a robot, can you believe it? Well, you should because that is happening right now in San Francisco where a pharmacy robot is working well at University of California. This proof has been operating for five years now and got approved to be used in hospitals ten months ago.

12. AI diagnostics

This may be the best thing robots can do for medical field. With “machine learning” technique, in which thousands of examples are given, an AI can be trained to do a task even better than an actual person can.

One of the most impressive notes to take is that this tool, with FDNA system, can accurately scan a patient through over 8000 diseases and scarce disorders in gens.

Another example is an AI created by the New York University which can point out the risk of diabetes or heart strokes.

13. Robotic Assisted Biopsy

MURAB, which stands for MRI and Ultrasound Robotic Assisted Biopsy, is a project that may become a life saver.

This technique is used in diagnosing cancers, which involve a steered transducer robot directed to a biopsy site with a combination of MRI and Ultrasound.

Then, it can collect all the data and provide 3D image, from which surgeons can decide on where to get tissues. After accomplishing it mission, the robot get out in the same way with how it got in, and patients feel almost nothing.

14. AI versus epidemics

Robots are masters in patterns and predicting based on the data that humans may sometime find overwhelming. This is the reason why the study of spreading and controlling diseases are the next goal for AI system.

Using the data provided, these body-less robots conduct analysis which then generate predictions on the time and place of potential disease outbreak, and how to prevent it from spreading.

Out of various products available, AIME system is among the coolest. It was deployed not long ago to fight dengue fever in Malaysia and got an amazing prediction accuracy rate of 85%. This help save thousands of lives and millions of dollars.

15. Antibacterial nanorobots

The last one on the list is antibacterial nanorobots. Besides owning the coolest name ever, this device can eliminate infections caused by bacteria right from patients’ blood. This amazing robot made of gold nanowires and covered with platelets and blood cells.

This process involves the robots mimicking an aimed bacterium, capturing the nearby bacteria in their net.

Doctors can fasten this process by guiding the robots through a patient’s body with ultrasounds, as well as treat localized infections.

The coolest thing is, as this technique make use of bacteria’s natural responses, nanorobots can replace broad-spectrum antibiotics to fight diseases that can resist antibiotics.