Robots to be Deployed in Hospitals to help COVID-19 Patients

To fight off the global pandemic and help COVID-19 patients, Kochi-based Asimov Robotics, a company working under the Maker Village of Kerala start-up mission, has unveiled their innovative robots, which are to be deployed in hospitals to provide assistance to the elderly, disabled, and sick people, especially the COVID-19 patients in isolation wards.

Asimov Robotics claims that “doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers are unable to provide care during disease outbreaks without the risk of getting infected by the quarantined patient. Thus, the aim of the innovation is to prevent the spread of Covid-19 by providing robots to care for the covid-19 patients inside isolation wards.

Sayabot design

The Sayabot is a care-giving robot. The robot has a face and gesture recognition as well as an autonomous navigation capability which allows it to simply navigates in indoor areas.

What makes this particular robot unique is the presence of an NLP (natural language processing), which allows the robot to intelligently converse with humans through voice and text. The robot has dexterous arms and hands that allow the robot to make human-like gestures and interactions.

Unfortunately, the Sayabot design was considered too big to fit in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), thus hindering healthcare workers during busy hours. Alternatively, a “Karmi-bot” design was created.

“Karmi-bot” design

This robot design is small, easy to handle, lightweight, has an autonomous remote control, has a detachable container with a self-disinfection facility of used items, self-charging, and can video stream as well as video conference.

The robot is designed with “a tray that can carry both food and medicines and an automatic disinfectant sprayer for cleaning the floor.” The bot can take food and medicines of about 25 kg for 5 patient beds.

Asimov Robotics also added that their robotic innovation will not only cover healthcare but “has a wide array of capabilities that make it work in airports, hotels, education and training, or any human environment.”