Robotic nurse can dress a mannequin in a hospital gown

A two-armed robot can grasp a folded hospital gown and dress a medical mannequin lying on a bed. The technology isn't yet ready for use on people, but it is an experimental step towards artificial nurses in hospitals. Fan Zhang and Yiannis Demiris at Imperial College London tested their robot in a scenario that closely mimicked the Certified Nursing Assistant test used in US healthcare, in which a trainee nurse has to put an open-backed robe on a person with weak or paralysed arms. Instead of a human, however, they used a mannequin designed for medical training. Flexible objects like a gown are extremely difficult for robots to work with, because their overall shape and size vary dramatically depending on how they are draped.