Conveyor-based robot allows fast and safe instrument handling in the operating room

According to [1]-[3], the healthcare systems are suffering from severe personnel shortages with a lack of medical care workers, operating room nurses, and surgical technicians. This deficiency will become worse in the upcoming decades. Automatization of highly standardized procedures could be a promising approach to address this issue. We designed a new concept for the automated handover and return of surgical instruments to the surgeon in an operating theater scenario to relieve operating room personnel from their workload. In this setup, the surgical instruments are delivered pre-sorted in an upright position by the sterilization unit in an instrument basket or drum. A single-use, doublelayered, brushy conveyor belt system mounted on a robot arm acts as the connector between pick-position (instrument basket) and individually pre-definable hand-over-position. The system is placed next to the table inside the operation room (OR). Based on voice commands, the conveyor intake moves over to the selected instrument and delivers it to the surgeon in a fast and short motion. After use, the surgeon can feed the instrument into the intake at the handover position and place it back in the instrument basket. The robot arm allows precise maneuvering of the intake and output position. The concept was realized as a minimal-viable product and will be evaluated for further improvement.