Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) surgical scrub robot, codeveloped with Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TVGH), is in the development phase and could be launched as early as spring next year, a senior hospital official said yesterday.
The scrub robot is the second phase of Hon Hai and the hospital’s three-phase robotics collaboration, following the “Nurabot” — an artificial intelligence (AI) nursing assistant — developed in the first phase, hospital honorary superintendent Chen Shih-an (陳適安) said on the sidelines of the Healthcare+ Expo.
The third phase would involve developing more advanced personal care robots that could provide clinical assistance and save nurses considerable time, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
The scrub robot, expected to be the first such robot to be used in operating rooms, would help nurses handle repetitive, heavy-loaded and high-precision tasks, such as hand scrubbing and retrieving surgical instruments, Hon Hai digital health chief Barry Chiang (姜志雄) said.
The greatest challenge in developing the scrub robot is ensuring the precision of its computer vision, as the system must be able to identify and handle hundreds of types of surgical instruments, which have different shapes and usages, Chiang said.
Hon Hai also plans to apply robotics and smart factory concepts to radiation therapy, as the work is considered highly dangerous for humans, he said.
The company also wants to promote the use of autonomous mobile robots and exoskeleton robots in medical settings to help reduce the burden on healthcare personnel, with broader deployment expected as early as 2027, Chiang said.
An exoskeleton robot is a wearable powered frame that enhances a person’s strength and mobility, reducing physical strain when lifting or supporting patients.
Hon Hai is developing multimodal medical model applications with TVGH and other hospitals to enhance the smart use of medical data, Chiang said.
It yesterday announced that its AI nursing assistant, Nurabot, which was jointly developed with the hospital and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, has been deployed after four months of multistage testing in clinical settings.
Hon Hai said the hospital’s on-premises hospital information system allows Nurabot to monitor workflow transitions, while Nvidia Corp’s Jetson AGX Orin computing modules provide the robot with decisionmaking capabilities.
Nvidia’s Omniverse digital twin system enables Nurabot to simulate in real-time, and Hon Hai’s large language model FoxBrain supports its smart vision and model updates, the company said.
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