Adaptive Robotic Nursing Assistant (ARNA)
The Adaptive Robotic Nursing Assistant (ARNA) project is a novel robotic system designed to assist nurses carry out physical tasks in hospital environments. The Next Generation Systems lab works in conjunction with Nursing students to make the research possible.
Project Objectives
ARNA is designed to assist nurses with two scenarios:
- Patient Sitter
- Visual monitoring of patient and alerting nurses in case the patient is
getting out of the bed or about to fall - Take vital reading periodically.
- Fetch items requested by the patient in the room.
- Ability to have a conversation with the patient.
- Visual monitoring of patient and alerting nurses in case the patient is
- Walker Scenario
- Assessing the patient’s gait and supporting them during walking.
- Carry essential equipment along with the patient.
- Providing necessary support when the user needs rest or slows down.
- Able to carry the patient when they get tired.
ARNA will be able to navigate hospitals and will be equipped with multi-modal skin sensors that can anticipate nurse intent, and automate mundane low-level tasks (while keeping nurses in the decision loop). ARNA will also use learning algorithms to adapt to human preferences. All of the above features will be used for a walker robot (to exercise recovering patients) and a patient sitter robot (to monitor a patients vital measurements).
Project Team
- Sumit Kumar Das – Research Scientist
- Chris Robinson – Research Support
- Shamsudeen Olawale Abubakar – Ph.D. Candidate
- Maxwell Carter – Undergraduate Research Assistant
- Christopher Trombley – Undergraduate Research Assistant
- Christopher Kolibab – Undergraduate Research Assistant
- Henry Reynolds – Undergraduate Research Assistant
- Rukmitha Chenna- Undergraduate Research Assistant
- Karthik Venkata – Undergraduate Research Assistant
To learn more about ARNA visit the NSF Award page.
