As the twin challenges of the global aging population and the shortage of nursing staff become more and more serious, remote on-site nursing robots are moving from science fiction concepts to practical applications. Regarding this technology, the purpose of remotely controlled humanoid or mobile robots is to provide patients, especially the elderly at home, with multi-dimensional support in areas such as living assistance, rehabilitation training, and emotional companionship. It is not intended to replace human nurses, but as an extension of human nurses' capabilities to cope with the shortage of manpower and the need to improve nursing flexibility.
How remote care robots can alleviate nursing shortage pressure
For remote on-site nursing robots, its real value lies in breaking through limitations such as geographical and manpower constraints. With the help of remote control, a professional nurse or caregiver can provide services to multiple patients in different locations at the same time, such as regular safety inspections, medication reminders, or simple communication. This situation is of great significance in areas where there is a serious shortage of nursing staff.
A German research project has provided a successful example. This project successfully integrated a humanoid robot called into the home environment. Nursing staff remotely controlled the robot through a virtual reality interface, and provided daily assistance to the elderly with care needs for more than 23 days. This model not only expanded the service scope of a single nursing staff, but also provided nursing staff with a more flexible work style.
What specific tasks can remote on-site care robots perform in home scenarios?
In a home scenario, the tasks of this type of robot can be summarized as "operation", "accompanying" and "monitoring". Specific tasks include assisting in transferring patients, delivering items, operating household equipment (such as turning on and off appliances), and even completing tasks that require delicate operations such as delivering a glass of water.
For example, the RHP robot demonstrated at the 2023 International Robot Exhibition can assist in patient transfers and non-routine tasks (such as operating circuit breakers). In addition, the environmental monitoring system integrated with the Internet of Things can work together, using sensors to monitor user activities, sleep quality and other data, and provide decision-making support to remote caregivers. We provide global procurement services for weak current smart products. The stable integration of such sensors and smart devices is a key to building a reliable remote care system.
What technical challenges do current telepresence robots face?
Although the prospects are promising, technical challenges still exist. One of the core challenges lies in the precision and real-time nature of the operations required. To achieve complex care-related actions safely and without error, such as assisting the elderly or handling easily spilled liquids, the robot needs to have a high degree of flexibility and precision in force control. At the same time, the remote control system must achieve nearly zero delay.
Another major challenge lies in the reliability and safety of the system. If a robot malfunctions while performing a vital task, it is likely to cause serious consequences. Therefore, how to ensure that the hardware is durable, the software is stable and reliable, and can avoid obstacles and navigate in complex home environments is a key point in technology development. In addition, in order for the robot to be widely accepted, its interaction interface must be intuitive enough to reduce the difficulty of operation for caregivers.
How receptive are nurses and patients to nursing robots?
The key to whether the technology can be implemented lies in acceptance. Research shows that nurses and patients have mixed attitudes towards this. The positive thing is that nurses agree that robots can reduce their physical burden, especially certain repetitive and labor-consuming tasks, and can reduce occupational exposure risks in special environments such as radiology departments.
However, widespread concerns focus on the comparison between robots and human nature. Many people believe that robots lack the emotional interaction ability and empathy of humans and cannot provide warm care. In addition, suspicions about the decision-making ability of robots, worries about malfunctions, vague definition of roles, and unclear attribution of responsibility for mistakes all constitute major obstacles to acceptance. Therefore, it is crucial to position robots as auxiliary tools rather than substitutes, and to strengthen human-machine collaboration training.
What costs and infrastructure should you consider when deploying a telepresence care system?
To deploy a complete remote on-site care system, the cost is not limited to the robot hardware itself. This is a set of system engineering that covers terminal robots, has a stable high-speed network, a secure cloud platform, a remote control station, and possible environmental IoT sensors.
The initial investment covers robot procurement, system development, and integration costs. Follow-up involves ongoing maintenance, including software upgrades, and network service costs. In addition, time and resources are required to train nursing staff to operate the system. Therefore, when planning for deployment, a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis must be conducted to consider whether it can save overall health care expenditures in the long term by reducing emergencies and delaying nursing home admissions.
What’s the future of telepresence care?
In the future, its development direction will move towards higher intelligence, collaboration and humanization. On the one hand, robots will integrate multi-modal perception with large model technology to improve their ability to perform routine tasks autonomously and achieve more natural voice interaction and emotional feedback. For example, in the future, robots may not only be able to complete the instruction of delivering medicines, but also be able to detect that patients are depressed through dialogue and then comfort them.
Human-machine collaboration will become closer and closer. Remote nursing staff will be more like a "commander", assuming the responsibility of high-level judgment, emotional giving and complex decision-making, while robots will actually carry out specific operating instructions. The ultimate goal is to build a nursing ecosystem with people as the core and technology hidden behind, so that technology can truly serve people's dignity and needs.
From your perspective, in the nursing process, what tasks are most suitable to be handed over to robots, and which aspects must be left to human nurses to do in person?
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