IEEE Sees Robots in Its Crystal Ball
From: Medical Device Link Daily - 12/04/2009

This year, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), led by several senior
IEEE members, developed a robotics roadmap that projects how sensors and
wearable devices will affect healthcare in the future. Among their
projections: 

- In five years, a variety of wearable devices should interface wirelessly
  with assistive robots. 

- In 10 years, smaller-scale and lighter-weight wireless wearable sensors
  providing a range of physiologic data should be available to detect and
  classify, as well as to some degree, predict user physiologic state such as
  heart rate or blood oxygen or glucose level. 

- In 15 years, off-the-shelf wireless physiologic sensing devices should be
  interoperable with computer- and robot-based coaching systems to facilitate
  biofeedback and other forms of feedback to the user for facilitating
  sophisticated human-robot, and more generally, human-machine interaction. 

The group cites the worldwide aging population as the main driver of this
technology. “There will be a huge demand for technologies that will help
enhance this population’s quality of life, in ways like allowing them to
remain in their homes while still getting the care and monitoring they need,”
says Henrik Christensen, an IEEE senior member based at the Georgia Institute
of Technology. Market analysts expect sports and fitness monitoring, which
are already making significant use of sensors and wearable devices, to help
drive investment in the healthcare market. 

Source:
http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/blog/?p=2410

Links:
Computing Community Consortium
http://www.cra.org/ccc/index.php

CCC / CRA Roadmapping for Robotics
http://www.us-robotics.us/

Update on CCC Robotics
http://www.cccblog.org/2009/02/11/update-on-ccc-robotics/

Henrik Christensen
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~hic/Georgia-HomePage/Home.html