Design and analysis of a robotic system for acute wound cleaning

The use of robots in medical applications is ever increasing with many diagnostic and therapeutic robots being developed and implemented in hospitals. Research in bio-robotics has been focused on solving many complicated problems and automating tasks that require precision and accuracy. There are as well many tedious, but simple tasks, carried out in hospital settings which can be automated easily and provide ease to the patients as well as the hospital staff. Wound cleaning is one such task and to design a system to automate this task is the main aim of this paper. The proposed solution mainly consists of an image processing component which identifies the location and critical parameters of the wound, and a robotic arm which plays a major role in cleaning the wound. The system designed is theoretically evaluated, simulated and is currently being developed and tested. This system could form basis for a completely autonomous wound therapy system with additional features integrated in future. © 2013 ACM.