NEURA Robotics is expanding into healthcare and life sciences with a new business unit and an autonomous mobile robot designed to transport empty hospital beds and sterile goods. The German robotics company has established NEURA HealthTech as a dedicated unit responsible for product strategy, market positioning and commercial activities in healthcare and life sciences. The unit is led by Sven Lange and includes staff with backgrounds in medical engineering, healthcare and regulatory affairs.
Its first application is a mobile robotic platform intended to automate the movement of empty beds between hospital wards, storage areas and floors. The robot can be assigned a transport task through a single request and is designed to navigate hospital corridors, patient rooms and lifts autonomously.
NEURA said the platform has an omnidirectional design that allows it to turn on its own axis and operate in confined spaces. Its safety functions remain active while the system raises a bed for transportation. The platform is intended solely for empty beds and is not designed to transport patients.
The company estimates that a hospital using the system for about 20 bed movements a day could free more than 1,300 staff hours annually. The calculation reflects time that would otherwise be spent by hospital personnel moving beds rather than providing patient care.
The platform connects to Neuraverse, NEURA’s ecosystem for linking robots, sensors and artificial intelligence. In sensor-equipped hospitals, the system is intended to combine information from devices, rooms and robots so that tasks detected by the software can be assigned to connected machines.
NEURA plans to expand its healthcare robotics portfolio beyond bed transportation. Its MAiRA cognitive robotic arms are being developed for applications including instrument and tool assistance and internal logistics. The company’s MiPA service robot is also being trained for patient-room assistance and medication support and is planned as a subsequent NEURA HealthTech application.
Before deployment, the bed-transport platform is validated against individual hospital layouts, including corridor dimensions, door widths and lift sizes. NEURA said its healthcare systems are being developed to meet applicable hygiene, safety and machinery requirements for clinical environments.
The systems will be offered through partners under a Robotics-as-a-Service model rather than through direct equipment purchases. Hospitals will pay a fixed monthly rate covering integration, operation, maintenance, software updates and round-the-clock standby support. Data associated with the systems will be hosted on European cloud infrastructure.
Integration partner AURONIQ ROBOTICS is responsible for system integration and deployment at healthcare facilities. The healthcare platform was presented at the Smart Health Automation Summit organised by VDMA HealthTech in Düsseldorf on September 29 and 30.
