A persistent-if less glamorous—challenge in hospitals lies in the day-to-day work of moving and lifting patients with impaired mobility. This is a challenge intensified by our burgeoning aging population, the obesity epidemic, and our aging healthcare workforce. During manual patient handling, the predominant risk of staff injury is excessive back and shoulder loading. A mobile robotic nurse assistant (RoNA) is highly desired to enhance the efficacy and quality of care that nurses and their paraprofessional staff can provide. Such an assistant could improve a nurse's working conditions by off-loading some of his or her most physically demanding duties, thereby reducing the potential for self-injury or injury to the patient. Hstar Technologies is developing a revolutionary RoNA system that provides physical assistance to nurses in a hospital ward. The design of RoNA is a safe and robust system that works effectively in a hospital environment under direct and telepresence control by a nurse or physician. RoNA has a humanoid design featuring bimanual dexterous manipulators that employ a series-elastic-actuation (SEA) system. These electric actuators provide manipulator compliance, safety, flexibility and the strength to lift patients weighing up to 300lbs. RoNA also features an innovative humanoid upper torso, a unique mobile platform with holonomic drive and posture stability enhancement, intelligent navigation control with 3D sensing and perception capability, an intuitive and innovative human-robot interaction control interface, and a highly integrated plan for healthcare system assembly. We anticipate that robotic maneuvering assistants would increase job satisfaction, reduce lifting-related injuries, and extend the years of effective service nurses could render in hospitals. These effects would reduce hospital costs and ameliorate problems posed by the shortage of nursing staff.

Energid is developing a realistic surgery simulator that delivers high fidelity visual and haptic feedback based on the physics of deformable objects. Modeling the interaction of surgical tools with soft biological tissue in real time poses challenges because the precise physical models of organs are not readily available, and the simulation of the behavior of tissue has a high computational burden. In this paper we present a realistic surgery simulation technique which inlcudes novel algorithms for simulating surgical palpation and cutting. We implement a meshfree numerical technique for realistic surgery palpation simulation. Simulation of surgical cutting is one of the most challenging tasks in the development of a surgery simulator. Changes in topology during simulation render precomputed data unusable. Moreover, the process is nonlinear and the underlying physics is complex. We propose a hybrid approach to the simulation of surgical cutting procedures by combining a node snapping technique with a physically based meshfree computational scheme.