Within the industry robotics are no
longer replaceable. In the field of
medicine, they're playing a role but it's
ever-growing. I'm speaking to Micheal Otto.
He's the vice president of Robotics and
the Medical Division of KUKA, a company
who's known for a long time as being a
key player in robotics. Michael, please
tell us a little bit about KUKA: the
company, its history.
The history of KUKA: We are within the robot business since the middle of the 70s, so we
start with the automotive industry, with
logistics, with welding. But within
the last 10 years we really start a new
business field in medical robotics.
And what's presently being used in the
field? How are they helping practitioners?
Today we are using really the robots
in the field we developed for the automotive
industry also for medical. So we are
doing for example x-ray imaging or
patient positioning where we use our
technology.
OK, and where do you see it going in the future?
In the future we see the robot really as a multi-purpose device.
Today we have some players who are
really dedicated to one kind of
application, but our purpose is really
that we can use the robot in a wide
range of applications, which are done by
the technology partners.
To that point, most people think of robotics as really excelling in a repetitive-type motion:
Pre-program it, just let it do its
thing. Medicine and medical applications
for practitioners and patients are
obviously much more varied.
How do you solve that problem?
Today, we've developed over the last couple of years the
technology where we are bringing the
human to the robot, so that's the biggest
goal in the field of medical. On the
one hand, we have the doctors, we
have the patients and we have to bring
them all together into one OR, for
example. And that's the challenge and  the game-changer for the field of medical robotics.
Micheal Otto from KUKA Medical Division, thank you very much for speaking with us.
Thanks a lot.
