The name of the base system (platform): | Boston Dynamics Spot (before SpotMini) |
Developers: | Boston Dynamics |
Date of the premiere of the system: | April, 2020 |
Branches: | Pharmaceutics, medicine, health care |
2020: Boston Dynamics opened drawings of robotic tools for telemedicine
In April, 2020 Boston Dynamics published on GitHub drawings of additional accessories to the four-footed Spot robot which allow to adapt it for work in the hospitals experiencing influx of patients in the period of a koronavirusny pandemic of COVID-19. Tools on GitHub are called Bosdyn hospital bot.
Boston Dynamics suggests to use Spot for remote survey of patients, measurement of the vital indicators, disinfection and delivery of medicines. The main objective of developers — to replace doctors where it is possible to reduce risks of infection of COVID-19 among medical staff.
Since April, 2020 the Spot robot is already used for remote survey of patients in Brigham Enda Uimens clinic in Boston. For this robot equipped with the holder with the tablet via which doctors ask patients on their status.
According to the adopted rules, patients with suspicion on COVID-19 before an input should enter primary survey including standard questions and temperature measurement the building of hospital. It requires existence up to 5 medical employees, putting at their risk infections — told in Boston Dynamics. — Using the mobile robot of hospital can reduce the number of necessary personnel on site and save the restricted stocks of individual protection equipment. |
Solutions for measurement of indicators, disinfection and deliveries of medicines are in a development stage so far. The company told that they decided to take temperature and frequency of breath using the infrared camera. But here with heartbeat measurement not everything is so simple. The photoplethysmography method which use mobile applications in the current conditions was incapable to give acceptable accuracy. Also it is unclear, as the robot could measure pressure — meanwhile developers suggested to send with it a manual tonometer that patients could do it independently.[1]