Trauma Pod is a mobile-roboticsurgery effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense intended to perform life-saving procedures on the battlefield; it responds only to voice commands, not physical gesture. Treat el al.23 developed a robot that delivers instruments to the main surgeon following verbal requests, retrieving them as soon as they are no longer required. The instruments are identified through machine-vision algorithms, with decisions made through a cognitive architecture. In 2011, Jacob et al.12–14 and Wachs et al.25 presented Gestonurse, the first surgical scrub nurse to understand nonverbal communication, including hand gestures.