Communications of the ACM
Your Next Nurse Could Be a Robot
An international team of researchers has trained a robot to imitate natural human actions, in the hope that humans and robots can coordinate their actions during critical events such as surgeries.
Credit: healthitoutcomes.com
Researchers from Italy's Polytechnic University of Milan led an international team that trained a robot to imitate natural human actions. The work demonstrates humans and robots can effectively coordinate their actions during high-stakes events such as surgeries.
Over time, the research could lead to improvements in safety during medical procedures because robots do not tire and can complete an endless series of precise movements.
Robotic co-workers "will just allow us to decrease workload and achieve better performances in several tasks, from medicine to industrial applications," says Polytechnic University of Milan's Elena De Momi.
As part of the experiment, the researchers photographed a human being conducting numerous reaching motions, in a way similar to handing instruments to a surgeon. The photographs were inputted into the neural network of the robotic arm. A human operator then guided the robotic arm in mimicking the reaching motions initially performed by the human subject.
Finally, several humans observed the robotic arm making numerous motions, and determined about 70% of the movements were "biologically inspired."
From ScienceDaily
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