Robots may replace humans as nursing assistants

In the experiment, the team photographed a human being conducting numerous reaching motions, in a way similar to handing instruments to a surgeon. These camera captures were input into the neural network of the robotic arm, which is crucial to controlling movements. Next a human operator guided the robotic arm in imitating the reaching motions that the human subject had initially performed.

Although there was not a perfect overlap between the robotic and human actions, they were broadly similar. Finally, several humans observed as the robotic arm made numerous motions. These observers determined whether the actions of the robotic arms were "biologically inspired," which would indicate that their neural networks had effectively learned to imitate human behaviour.

About 70 per cent of the time this is exactly what the human observers concluded, researchers said. If robotic arms can indeed imitate human behaviour, it would be necessary to build conditions in which humans and robots can cooperate effectively in high stress environments like operating rooms, they said. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Artificial Intelligence).