Robots are already being used to help take stock of items on supermarket shelves, reducing the amount of interaction between humans. And now researchers are working to design robots to assist and relieve overburdened nurses.
Vivian Chu and Andrea Thomaz, co-founders of Austin, Texas-based Diligent Robots, have focused their expertise on so-called social robots to help healthcare workers during the pandemic. Leading up to the pandemic, the pair had interviewed, shadowed and watched nurses engage with their patients for 2.5 years and saw how they spent much of their time looking for supplies and medicines when they could have worked directly with patients.
“The robot can’t be a nurse. It’s not going to be a nurse,” Chu says, according to the article. “But what it’s perfect for is going in and helping relieve the nurse that is so overburdened.”