Robotic systems for hospitals

This paper provides the reader with an overview of the state-of-the-art in robotic systems for hospitals. The paper focuses on two main categories of robotic systems in hospitals: robots for providing support in patient care and robots used for surgery assistance. For each category, the requirements as seen from the medical, safety, user and economical point of view are presented. Examples of available systems and ongoing developments are reviewed and their ability to meet these requirements is discussed. Finally, based on the experience of these developments, the paper describes a scenario of the type of robotic applications which have a good chance of becoming commonplace in hospitals.