Artificial Intelligence in Care Robotics

In hospital, providing patients with sufficient food and fluids makes an important contribution to their recovery. If food or drink consumption is too low, medical action can be identified at an early stage. In hectic hospital operations, however, it is almost impossible to systematically document and analyze food and fluid intake and to react to situations of inadequate nutrition.

A Robotic System for the Care of Patients

In the project »KoniuS«, we are supporting the IT company CONET Solutions GmbH in the design of an innovative robotic system for the intelligent serving of food and drinks at Bonn University Hospital. This system is intended to automatically record patients' food and liquid consumption and compare it with medical recommendations, automatically identify individual needs for action and serve them appropriately when food and drinks are served in the future. The far-reaching digitalization of this process is intended to relieve the burden on nursing staff and provide patients with optimal care.
 

Robots, Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence

The overall concept for Bonn University Hospital envisages an autonomous robot for serving food and drinks as the central technological component. This robot will be equipped with a camera system for the digital recording of food and liquids that have not been consumed. The images can be used to determine individual food and drink consumption. This data flows into an appropriately designed data analysis that uses artificial intelligence methods to identify case-specific needs for action. Based on this information and specific suggestions as to what needs to be done, care staff can portion the food and drink appropriately. The overall concept is being implemented step by step as part of ongoing and future research and development projects.