Advanced medical robotics: outcomes from the DTI feasibility study

Reports on a feasibility study into prospects for advanced medical robots. The brief for the study was to survey the current state of the art internationally in medical robots, and to identify the three most promising advanced medical robot concepts for future development. The concepts recommended were a patient handling robot to assist bed-ridden hospital patients, a precision surgery robot for assisting human surgeons in procedures requiring high precision and/or hazardous substances (such as radiotherapy), and a home-based robot intended to give a measure of independent living to elderly and disabled people who would otherwise be confined to institutional care. All three of these projects are now in the process of development by separate consortia of industrial and academic organisations, the first two being rather further down the road in this respect. They are described, and the lag of the technology behind that of industry is noted