Giving patients a lift - the robotic nursing assistant (RoNA)

Nursing has ranked as one of the top 10 occupations for causing the work-related musculoskeletal injuries in U.S. Constantly and manually lifting and repositioning patients around bed and transferring them from bed to bed have been recognized as the major reasons causing nurses´ workrelated musculoskeletal injuries. We believe that advanced robotic technologies can assist nurses in performing the labor intensive tasks and preventing the musculoskeletal injuries among medical workers and nurses. In this paper, we present Hstar Technologies´ 2^nd generation Robotic Nursing Assistant (RoNA) systemRoNA. Compared to the 1^st generation RoNA system released in 2011, the RoNA has more powerful arms which can lift up to 500 pounds patient. The RoNA has been equipped with many intelligent sensors that allow nurse easily and intuitively guide it performing the patient lifting. The paper also discusses the design improvement, control system as well as the software architecture of the RoNA system.