Medical assistance robots: 
The robotics innovator

Chiheb Dahmani sounds almost like a proud father when he talks about the “Robbies.” This is what his team calls the prototypes of robotic medical assistants it is developing at the innovation lab in Kemnath, eastern Bavaria, Germany. Unsurprisingly, each “Robbie” also has its own name: Herbert, Patrick, Vanessa, and AURORA. Using common names like these of course also helps to maintain the confidentiality required in this kind of research projects. We are not allowed to say anything about Herbert and Patrick yet, but you can find out more about AURORA and Vanessa in this article.

Dahmani, who was born and grew up in Tunisia, is an enthusiatic medtech engineer. He became very interested in medicine at an early age: “As a child, I actually wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I was captivated by the whole idea, but it turned out to involve too much learning by heart,” he admits with a smile. He decided to take a different path in the medical field and become an engineer instead: “It’s important to me that my work helps people,” he reveals. After graduating from high school, he won a scholarship to study engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. There, Dahmani eventually gained a doctorate for his work on the use of magnetic nanoparticles in medicine.

Dahmani started his professional career with the Siemens Graduate Program (SGP), which aims to prepare young talents for a career at Siemens. Next came a series of different international posts in innovation, collaboration management, research and development (R&D), and market development at Siemens Healthineers, focusing on medical imaging solutions. He spent time working in France, Singapore, and Japan as well as Germany. Dahmani now leads the Technology & Innovation department at the Mechatronic Products division. He and his team of eight conduct research in a number of areas, including robot-assisted solutions for hospital workflows.

“At Siemens Healthineers, we view robotics as a key technology for the future, not least to help address the severe shortage of specialist medical staff,” Dahmani says. Medical assistance robots equipped with AI could be used in care, diagnosis, and the operating room, for example. These engineered helpers could appear in a wide range of forms and perform numerous different tasks. However, their main role would be to assist with time-consuming routine activities, ranging from the self-driving patient couch and mobile C-arm that produces X-ray images in real time during operations to the transport of laboratory samples.

Robot development involves engineers from the fields of mechanical engineering, systems engineering, electrical engineering, and electronics working together with experts in software architecture, data science, design, and user experience. Mechatronics engineers assemble the various components to create a prototype.

Collaboration between different in-house experts is just one of the necessary elements in developing a robot. The team usually also works with external partner companies from industry that specialize in particular components, such as cameras for example. Clinical collaborations are also important, Dahmani stresses: “Our clinical partners are able to use and trial the robots under realistic clinical conditions. The valuable feedback they give us is vital for optimizing robot performance.”

One of the most important research projects of recent years is AURORA, a cooperation between Siemens Healthineers and the Research Group Minimally Invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Interventions (MITI) based at the TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany. The project, which began in 2020, was financed by the Bavarian Research Foundation. It aimed to develop a mobile service robot for the nonsterile part of the operating room to assist the surgical team with the provision of sterile packaged materials and perform the role of a circulating nurse.

Dahmani says that with its integrated cameras, AURORA can already distinguish between people in sterile and nonsterile clothing and makes sure it does not move too close. People in sterile clothing, he explains, need to be given more space. AURORA will learn more in future too: “In the longer term, we want to integrate voice control based on large language models instead of gesture recognition.” Dahmani explains that this will require much more training, though. And the possibility of extending the AURORA concept to include use as a robot assistant in the catheter laboratory is also currently being investigated.

Behind the name “Vanessa” lies another collaborative research project, this time with Helsinki University Hospital in Finland. Working with the hospital and external industry partners from United Robotics Group, Dahmani and his team tested various prototypes of a robot assistant for medical laboratories. In future, these might be used in conjunction with the Atellica® Solution, for example, which performs functions such as automating lab processes.

The robot could look after routine tasks in medical laboratories in future so that human staff can concentrate on other activities. Suitable tasks might include transporting blood samples or reagents from one place to another.

Thanks to his roots and his international career, Chiheb Dahmani speaks four languages fluently: Arabic, French, English, and German. He spent several years working in Japan, which is often regarded as the “motherland” of robotics. During this time, he not only learned Japanese, but also realized that different cultures respond to robots in quite different ways.

“From the point of view of neuroscience, feelings are ultimately based on electrical signals generated within the body, so perhaps the idea of a robot soul should not seem so very far-fetched,” Dahmani reflects. “At the same time though, I think it would be very difficult, probably impossible even, to reproduce human feelings artificially.”

Dahmani believes that robots have enormous potential for helping people but will never be able to take the place of humans, especially in medicine: “Words of comfort from another human being matter more than ever to me when I am not feeling good. What the assistance robot can do is help make sure a human being has the time to attend to me as a patient.”

Perhaps surprisingly, there is nothing at all robot-like to be found in Dahmani’s family home apart from in the bedrooms of his three children. There is not even a robot vacuum cleaner. Yet, he does admit that he would be tempted to try one of the humanoid robots currently being developed by various robotic companies in the USA, Japan, and China, if it was possible to buy one: “One of those would be very handy to carry heavy items from the car to the house after a shopping trip and that sort of thing,” Dahmani chuckles. “But for me, it could still never be a substitute for human company.”