Heterogeneous artificial agents for triage nurse assistance

A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like” (whatever that means) artificial agent both in terms of body and brain. We now have seen an increasing number of humanoid robots (such as Honda´s ASIMO, Aldebaran´s Nao and many others). These, however, display only a limited number of cognitive skills in terms of perception, learning and decision-making. On the other hand, brain research has begun to produce computational models such as LIDA. In this paper, we propose an intermediate approach for body-brain integration in a form of a scenario-based distributed system. Busy hospital Emergency Departments (ED) are concerned with shortening the waiting times of patients, with relieving overburdened triage team physicians, nurses and medics, and with reducing the number of mistakes. Here we propose a system of cognitive robots and a supervisor, dubbed the TriageBot System that would gather both logistical and medical information, as well as take diagnostic measurements, from an incoming patient for later use by the triage team. TriageBot would also give tentative, possible diagnoses to the triage nurse, along with recommendations for non-physician care Some of the robots in the TriageBot System would be humanoid in form, but it is not necessary that all of them take this form. Advances in humanoid robotic design, in sensor technology, and in cognitive control architectures make such a system feasible, at least in principle.