Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Acupuncture is gaining increasing attention and recognition all over the world.
However, a lot of physical labor is paid by acupuncturists. It is natural to resort to a robot which can improve the accuracy as well as the efficacy of therapy. Several teams have separately developed real acupuncture robots or related technologies and even went to the stage of clinical trial and then achieved success commercially.
A completed clinical practical acupuncture robot is not far from reach with the combination of existing mature medical robotic technologies.
A hand-eye-brain coordination framework is proposed in this review to integrate the potential utilizing technologies including force feedback, binocular vision, and automatic prescription. We should take acupuncture prescription with artificial intelligence and future development trends into account and make a feasible choice in development of modern acupuncture.
Acupuncture is gaining increasing attention with the emergence of integrative medicine. Combination of modern technologies and traditional acupuncture will bridge the cultural gap with Western medicine and improve the development of integrative medicine. The current advancement of the acupuncture robot and the potential utilizing medical robotic technologies are summarized in this review.
