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JU’s Chang Robotics Studio will display collaborative cellular robots for hospital use. Supply: Chang Robotics
Final week, Chang Robotics and Jacksonville College mentioned they’re launching a “Robotic Studio.” Within the studio, researchers will program, check, and put together cutting-edge robots designed for hospitals, in response to the Jacksonville Seaside, Fla.-based engineering agency.
Jacksonville College (JU) has opened about 4,000 sq. ft. (371.6 sq. m) on the third ground of its Well being Sciences Advanced for the challenge. It invited college students, companies, and the general public “to witness the longer term in motion as these superior machines put together to hitch healthcare groups and reshape the truth of affected person care.”
“The partnership with Chang Robotics displays the rising power of our engineering and pc science applications at Jacksonville College, aligning with our hands-on design curriculum the place college students be taught the speculation and apply their data to related rising applied sciences,” said Dr. Barbara Ritter, dean of the Davis School of Enterprise & Expertise.
“Jacksonville is exclusive within the sturdy connections between observe and academia,” she added. “It’s all these partnerships that guarantee our graduates are among the best-prepared within the nation to be job-ready on Day 1.”
“Via this partnership with Chang Robotics, our college students can collaborate on the slicing fringe of healthcare expertise, permitting them to use their robotics, AI and programming expertise in real-world eventualities,” mentioned Invoice Hill, govt director of Jacksonville College’s STEAM Institute. “It’s an unparalleled alternative to form the way forward for healthcare whereas making ready the following technology of engineers and pc scientists to guide innovation in an more and more automated world.”
Chang Robotics preps cobots for hospital deployment
The companions mentioned that the Chang Robotics Robotic Studio will showcase the ultimate programming and testing of eight new collaborative cellular robots. These “Co-Bots” are supposed for deployment as companions to practitioners in a close-by hospital.
Chang Industrial, which does enterprise as Chang Robotics, mentioned it makes a speciality of engineering superior manufacturing, collaborative robotics, and disruptive automation. It serves quite a lot of sectors, together with manufacturing, healthcare, authorities expertise, and extra.
The firm has various healthcare-related initiatives in its portfolio, which consists of autonomous hospital beds, robotic pharmacy gear, nursing robots, and extra.

Chang Robotics’ present healthcare initiatives embrace autonomous hospital beds, which it mentioned can independently navigate via hospital corridors, decreasing the bodily calls for on healthcare staff. | Supply: Chang Robotics
What to anticipate when visiting the Robotic Studio
The Robotic Studio serves as an academic useful resource and a showcase for robotic assist of nurses and different healthcare professionals. Members of the general public who want to go to the Robotic Studio in Jacksonville this month can register on-line.
Guests can see autonomous cellular robots (AMRs) transport important provides inside a simulated healthcare setting, shifting from a chosen provide room to affected person rooms. The robots will deal with numerous objects, from linens and medical instruments to meals and drugs, demonstrating their potential to streamline hospital logistics.
In observe, the AMRs will deal with many time-consuming and bodily taxing features of staffers’ roles. Builders have discovered that robots can improve job satisfaction and cut back turnover for nurses and different well being practitioners by enabling them to place extra of their time and deal with probably the most useful work — their face-to-face interactions with sufferers.
“This effort goals to showcase the significance of technological implementations like this and its optimistic affect on healthcare,” mentioned Kate McAfoose, president of Chang Robotics. “We’re serving to all concerned to take greater steps in re-imagining digital, bodily, and cellular well being.”
McAfoose famous that the expertise demonstrated within the new studio is being carried out and expanded in one of many nation’s largest hospital networks. Profitable laboratories like that one and an IP Studio in Evanston, Sick., had been main components in Chang Robotics being acknowledged by Quick Firm as one among 2024’s “Most Revolutionary Firms” within the AI and Robotics class.