The University of Sheffield

MediTel is a game-changing prototype robotics technology developed in just nine months to provide potentially life-saving remote medical treatment to casualties in high-risk emergency environments.

Using medical telexistence (MediTel) technology, researchers from the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and Sheffield Robotics successfully created and trialled a rugged mobile, uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV), which incorporates several cutting-edge technologies, including bi-manual teleoperation of two cobot arms, haptic feedback control, immersive virtual reality (VR) visualisation and mmWave communications technology.

Integrating these technologies into the MediTel platform enables medics and operators to assess critical casualties in hazardous environments, allowing them to perform a remote triage while ensuring their safety.

The platform also implements a novel approach to semi-autonomous robot tool use, reducing the operator’s cognitive load.

The project was funded by DASA and DSTL and demonstrated the first-of-its-kind, fully integrated medical telexistence solution for hazardous environments.

It effectively enables remote operation of medical devices to perform a critical initial assessment of a casualty within 20 minutes, including temperature measurement, blood pressure and heart rate checks, palpation of the abdomen and administering pain relief through an auto-injector – all while streaming real-time data to the remote operator using high bandwidth communications technology.