ABSTRACT
Healthcare service robots (HSRs) gained immense popularity over the past decade and more recently due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic during which social distancing became a way to prevent the virus from spreading. Thanks to their high levels of autonomy, HSRs are generally believed to make care delivery and hospital management more effective and quick, reduce labor costs for repetitive and often tedious tasks, and improve healthcare practitioners’ work. Moreover, beyond the clinical context, HSRs are developed in parallel to wearable devices and digital apps. These use advanced cloud robotics and many sensors to properly function and are likely to include artificial intelligence (AI) elements in the future, too, allowing for increasingly sophisticated HSRs soon. More specifically, there has been significant progress in AI following the development of deep neural networks, natural language processing, and computer vision, which are currently actively integrating into healthcare delivery through robot technologies. This chapter provides an overview of the HSR state of the art and its ecosystem. The chapter concludes by highlighting the application of AI in HSRs.
