Robot-assisted medical reachback: a survey of how medical personnel expect to interact with rescue robots

Abstract

This work introduces robot-assisted medical reach-back, where a robot acts as a surrogate for medical personnel in situations such as urban search and rescue, where a medical specialist cannot directly interact with a trapped victim. It presents findings of a survey of 28 medical specialists obtained after they operated rescue robots at Trauma Day 2003. The survey focused on how they want to interact with a robot for critical care. The majority wanted to control the robot themselves over the Internet, but also have the robot operator remain available for support. The responders wanted the robot operator to have medical training and be able to carry out some of the initial data collection procedures, as well as provide psychological comfort to the victim, during periods, when the medical specialist was not available.