The Ayurveda, the science of “Ayur” (life) and “Ved” (knowledge), is believed to be the knowledge of complete balance of body, mind and spirit.
Shirodhara, one of the healing techniques in Ayurveda, consists of dripping oils on the patient’s forehead and has long been prescribed for headache, insomnia, anxiety, neurosis, hypertension and several kinds of psychosis.

Now Kazuo Uebaba and his team at the International Traditional Medicine Research Center of Toyama prefecture have developed a healing robot to conduct Shirodhara in a standardised manner.

“The healing robot will conduct Shirodhara in a computerised reproducible manner. This helps in studying the mechanism of the treatment.” Dr. Kazuo says.

The robot now performs five functions – regulation of oil temperature and oil flow rate, oil filtration and oil disinfecting, three patterns of nozzle movement and speed regulation of the nozzle, regulating the oil flow according to head movement with a CCD camera on the nozzle head, monitoring skin temperature, heart rate and respiration. ” We are developing the sixth function – the response to voice command.” Study on Shirodhara in palliative care is also under way.

From The Hindu, via Mobile Robotics.