Robotik in Pflege und Krankenhaus - Einsatzfelder, Produkte und aktuelle Forschungsarbeiten

In the media, more and more can be read about »care robots« as a possible solution for the current lack of qualified care staff- but often without differentiating this term any further. The goal of this article is to elaborate for which application areas in the context of care and medical treatment, products already exist and which topics current research projects are dealing with based on concrete examples. On the one side, robots will be presented that are designed to support staff in elderly care institutions and hospitals. On the other side, the article will look into robots supposed to directly support elderly persons or persons in need of care. Our observations show that existing products either provide only reduced interaction abilities or come with only limited autonomy or »intelligence«. »Care robots« providing extensive, also physical interaction abilities and complex autonomous behaviour are getting researched a lot but at the moment do not exist as products on the market