Health Check Robot: From Mercury Cuffs to ABB

A health check robot takes routine readings such as blood pressure, pulse, temperature or blood oxygen and stores them, so a nurse does not have to hold the cuff. The idea sounds new, but most of the sensors inside these machines are decades old. This post looks at how vital signs were checked by hand, how cuffs and finger clips became automatic, why a Chinese senior-care operator now plans to install up to 3,000 health-check robots, where ABB robots fit into healthcare today, and what a robot can and cannot measure on its own.

A higi self-service blood pressure station with a seat, arm cuff and touch screen inside a Stop and Shop store. Photo: Mike Mozart / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How doctors checked blood pressure before machines

Blood pressure was the first vital sign to get a dedicated instrument. Samuel von Basch devised a sphygmomanometer in 1881. In 1896 the Italian physician Scipione Riva-Rocci introduced a version that was much easier to use, with a cuff around the upper arm and a mercury column for the reading. Harvey Cushing brought one of Riva-Rocci's devices to the United States in 1901 and made it popular with physicians, and in 1905 the Russian surgeon Nikolai Korotkov added the diastolic reading after describing the sounds heard through a stethoscope as the cuff deflates.

The Riva-Rocci sphygmomanometer that Nikolai Korotkov used for his measurements, from his dissertation. Photo: N. S. Korotkoff via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

For most of the twentieth century the check stayed manual. A nurse pumped the cuff, listened, watched the mercury fall and wrote the numbers on a paper chart, then counted the pulse against a watch and read a glass thermometer. Oxygen in the blood was harder to check until 1972, when the Japanese bioengineers Takuo Aoyagi and Michio Kishi developed the first pulse oximeter, which Nihon Kohden manufactured. Minolta sold the first finger pulse oximeter in 1977. In the United States Biox brought one to market in 1980, and Nellcor followed in 1983.

A mercury blood pressure meter of the Riva-Rocci type made by ERKA in the 1960s, in the TECHNOSEUM collection. Photo: TECHNOSEUM / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The first automation came from electronics. Digital meters replaced listening with oscillometric detection: a sensor picks up pressure pulses in the cuff and a chip calculates the result, so anyone can take a reading at home. That made cheap home monitors possible and put self-service blood pressure machines in pharmacies and supermarkets. Newer kiosks such as the higi station pair the cuff with a touch screen and a seat. None of these machines moves, though. The person still sits down and puts their own arm in the cuff.

A digital home blood pressure monitor with its arm cuff, which calculates the reading electronically. Photo: Adefanike / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Health check robots in senior-care centres today

The latest push comes from China's senior-care market. On 15 October 2026 Decent Holding, a Nasdaq-listed company with about 700 senior-care centres, said it plans an initial rollout of up to 3,000 Taihao intelligent health management robots at selected centres. Older people would run self-service checks covering indicators such as blood pressure, ECG, blood glucose and body composition, and the device also offers thermal imaging. Results go to Decent's platform for trend tracking, and a risk signal can alert the centre, family members and staff. The company says the checks are for wellness monitoring and not for diagnosis, and that the final number depends on product supply and other conditions.

A wireless vital signs monitor mounted on the wall of an exam room at a clinic in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 2013. Photo: Cpl. Paul Peterson / U.S. Marine Corps via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In the United States the robot goes to the patient. Norbert Health, a Brooklyn startup, announced a $14 million Series A in September 2026. It supplies the clinical software and voice for mobile robots in skilled nursing facilities, where the robots make rounds, capture vital signs without contact, run assessments and write each visit into the electronic health record. Our posts on elder care robots and ICU nursing robots cover the wider care picture. For health checks, these two news items show two different models: a fixed station that people walk up to, and a robot that walks the corridor.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

ABB does not make a health check robot, and no source links it to these projects. Its healthcare work so far is in hospital laboratories. In 2019 ABB set up a healthcare research hub at the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute in Houston to develop robots for hospital labs, and it has shown a mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base. The GoFa CRB 15000 cobot stops when it senses contact, so it could in principle hold a sensor or hand a cuff to a resident. Nobody sells that today; it is only a possibility. A cell like that would be built and tested first in RobotStudio.

A GoFa cobot working with lab equipment at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

What robots can and cannot measure next

Contact sensors still give the most trusted numbers. A cuff, a finger clip, ECG electrodes and a glucose strip all need the person to sit still and place a body part correctly. A kiosk or robot can help with that by talking the person through each step, repeating a reading that looks wrong and keeping the record without copying errors. Camera-based sensing is improving, with thermal cameras for skin temperature and video methods for pulse and breathing, but movement, poor light and clothing easily upset these readings.

A finger pulse oximeter clipped on a training manikin during a first aid exercise. Photo: Pöllö / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

A robot cannot take a reading from someone who refuses to sit for it, and it cannot judge whether new chest pain is serious or replace a doctor's diagnosis. That is why Decent describes its devices as wellness tools that do not substitute for medical institutions. At home, the next few years look like connected cuffs and oximeters sending results to an app or a care service, with a robot or smart speaker reminding an older person to measure. When a reading looks odd, a nurse with a cuff and a stethoscope still checks it.

A U.S. Navy doctor takes an older woman's blood pressure by hand during the Continuing Promise 2008 mission. Photo: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The open problems are cost, regulation, privacy and skills. Each health check robot needs calibrated sensors, a secure data link and approval wherever it makes medical claims, and Norbert says part of its new funding goes to regulatory clearances. Staff need training to act on alerts, and older people need to trust the machine. In factories, demand for these devices means more precise assembly of small sensors. ABB's single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 already does this kind of work on GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki, where it applies glue beads to a sensor part.

A single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 in its cell on GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki. Photo: ABB

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