Camera ensures control of robotic nurse is all in hand

According to Juan Pablo Wachs, assistant professor of industrial engineering at the university, the hand-gesture-recognition and robotic-nurse innovations might help to reduce the length of surgeries and the potential for infection.

Surgeons routinely need to review medical images and records during surgery, but stepping away from the operating table and touching a keyboard and mouse can delay the surgery, and increase the risk of spreading infection-causing bacteria.

The new approach is a system that uses the Kinect camera from Microsoft and specialised algorithms to recognise hand gestures as commands to instruct a computer or robot.

At the same time, a robotic scrub nurse represents a potential tool that might improve operating-room efficiency, Wachs said.

The research into hand-gesture recognition began several years ago in work led by the Washington Hospital Center and Ben-Gurion University, where Wachs was a research fellow and doctoral student.

He is now working to extend the system’s capabilities in research with Purdue’s School of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences.