In a complex case, scrub techs and nurses can have plenty of manual tasks to perform at the same time. With multiple surgeons to assist, two hands are often not enough. Hence, there is a need for a manual task robotic assistant. Now an international team has been working on such a robot. Researchers from Purdue University, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel combined computer vision technology and a robotic arm into a unified system. They’re using a Microsoft Kinect camera for hand gesture recognition to give commands to the robot and to browse through radiological images on a nearby computer screen. See for yourself:
Press release: Future surgeons may use robotic nurse, ‘gesture recognition’
Abstract in Communications of the ACM: Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications
Flashback: Microsoft Kinect 3D Camera for Hands-Free Radiologic Image Browsing