SBIR Phase II: Mobile Manipulation Hospital Service Robots

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目对医院服务机器人的广泛影响/商业潜力是提高医院系统的护理质量，医院系统在提供高质量的以患者为中心的护理的压力越来越大，同时作为盈利业务运作。医院面临合格护士短缺和护士流动率高的问题。护士在沟通护理计划、教育病人和防范医疗差错方面发挥着关键作用。他们在直接护理活动中花费的时间是患者满意度、更好的患者结果、更少的错误和更短的住院时间的关键决定因素。面对美国各地的护士短缺，让护士达到“最高水平”变得越来越重要。减少他们花在非护理任务上的时间对实现这一目标至关重要。自动化可以让临床工作人员专注于提供熟练的护理，从而解决这些挑战和劳动力短缺问题。拟议中的项目旨在开发足够通用的技术，以转移到其他市场，如长期护理机构，并最终转移到个人消费者。在家中执行辅助任务的机器人可以增加许多老年人独立生活的可行性。拟议中的项目将确定开发医院服务机器人的技术和商业可行性，这些机器人可以在急症监护室担任助理，使护士能够花更多的时间陪伴病人。该项目将在三个方面取得技术进步：提议的机器人在护理单位和整个医院内自主导航的能力（导航能力）；易于使其操作技能适应特定任务和特定医院/单位的物理特征（操作技能的适应性学习）；并以社会可接受的方式与人类一起工作，包括在拥挤的走廊中适当的导航，语音和眼睛注视行为，传达机器人的意图（社会智能互操作性）。该团队打算与一家合作伙伴医院密切合作，反复提高由美国国家科学基金会资助开发的人工智能软件套件的可靠性和稳健性，并部署三个核心竞争力的生产质量版本。最后6个月将进行长期部署，机器人将在合作医院的急症监护室自主工作。机器人对单位员工和工作流程的影响将被记录下来，最终目标是开发一种服务机器人，医院员工将其视为护理团队的称职成员。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project on hospital service robots is improving the quality of care in hospital systems that are under increased pressure to provide high-quality patient-centric care while functioning as profitable businesses. Hospitals face a shortage of qualified nurses and high rates of nurse turnover. Nurses play a critical role in communicating care plans, educating patients, and guarding against medical errors. The amount of time they spend in direct care activities is a key determinant of patient satisfaction, better patient outcomes, fewer errors, and shorter lengths of stay. In the face of nursing shortages across the U.S., it is increasingly important to have nurses performing at the 'top of their license'. Reducing the amount of time they spend on non-nursing tasks is crucial to this goal. Automation could address these challenges and labor shortage by allowing clinical staff to focus on providing skilled care. The proposed project aims to develop technology that is general-purpose enough to transfer to other markets, such as long term care facilities and, eventually, individual consumers. Robots that perform assistive tasks in homes could increase the feasibility of independent living for many older adults.The proposed project will establish the technical and commercial feasibility of developing hospital service robots that act as assistants on acute care units, enabling nurses to spend more time at the bedside with patients. This project will make technical advances along three dimensions: the ability of the proposed robot to autonomously navigate within nursing units and across the hospital (navigation capabilities); to easily adapt its manipulation skills to specific tasks and to physical characteristics of a particular hospital/unit (adaptive learning of manipulation skills); and to work alongside humans in a socially acceptable manner, including appropriate navigation in crowded hallways, speech, and eye gaze behaviors that communicate the robot's intentions (socially intelligent interoperability). The team intends to collaborate closely with a single partner hospital to iteratively improve the reliability and robustness of the artificial intelligence software suite developed with NSF funding and to deploy production-quality versions of the three core competencies. The final 6 months will involve a long-term deployment, with the robot autonomously working on an acute care unit of the partner hospital. The impact of the robot on unit staff and workflows will be documented, with the ultimate goal of developing a service robot that hospital staff view as a competent member of the care team.