A medical robot is a robot used in the medical sciences. They include surgical robots. These are in most telemanipulators, which use the surgeon's activators on one side to control the "effector" on the other side.

Robots specializing in human treatment include surgical robots and rehabilitation robots. The field of assistive and therapeutic robotic devices is also expanding rapidly. These include robots that help patients rehabilitate from serious conditions like strokes, empathic robots that assist in the care of older or physically/mentally challenged individuals, and industrial robots that take on a variety of routine tasks, such as sterilizing rooms and delivering medical supplies and equipment, including medications.

• Surgical robots: either allow surgical operations to be carried out with big precision than an unaided human surgeon or allow remote surgery where a human surgeon is not physically present with the patient.
• Rehabilitation robots: facilitate and support the lives of infirm, elderly people, or those with dysfunction of body parts affecting movement. These robots are also used for rehabilitation and related procedures, such as training and therapy.
• Biorobots: a group of robots designed to imitate the cognition of humans and animals.
• Telepresence robots: allow off-site medical professionals to move, look around, communicate, and participate from remote locations.
• Pharmacy automation: robotic systems to dispense oral solids in a retail pharmacy setting or preparing sterile IV admixtures in a hospital pharmacy setting.
• Companion robot: has the capability to engage emotionally with users keeping them company and alerting if there is a problem with their health.
• Disinfection robot: has the capability to disinfect a whole room in mere minutes, generally using pulsed ultraviolet light. They are being used to fight Ebola virus disease.

Future Models

Advanced robots continue to be designed for an ever-expanding range of applications in the healthcare space. For example, a research team led by Gregory Fischer, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is developing a compact, high-precision surgical robot that will operate within the bore of an MRI scanner, as well as the electronic control systems and software that go with it, to improve prostate biopsy accuracy.

To develop robots that can work inside an MRI scanner, Fischer and his team have had to overcome several significant technical challenges. Since the MRI scanner uses a powerful magnet, the robot, including all of its sensors and actuators, must be made from nonferrous materials. "On top of all this, we had to develop the communications protocols and software interfaces for controlling the robot, and interface those with higher-level imaging and planning systems," says Fischer. “The robot must be easy for a non-technical surgical team to sterilize, set up, and place in the scanner. This all added up to a massive systems integration project which required many iterations of the hardware and software to get to that point."

In other research, virtual reality is being integrated with rehabilitation robots to expand the range of therapy exercise, increasing motivation and physical treatment effects. Exciting discoveries are being made with nanoparticles and nanomaterials. For example, nanoparticles can traverse the “blood-brain barrier.” In the future, nanodevices can be loaded with “treatment payloads” of medicine that can be injected into the body and automatically guided to the precise target sites within the body. Soon, ingestible, broadband-enabled digital tools will be available that use wireless technology to help monitor internal reactions to medications.

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