Recently, we had the chance to check out the Robotics in Health Care Tech Demo Day at Kaiser Permanente's Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, a warehouse-like living laboratory in San Leandro, California, that acts as a testing ground for health innovations. This slide depicts what Kaiser calls "the Hospital Room of the Future," a patient room featuring products that could be in hospital rooms just three to five years down the line.

This wireless vital signs monitor tracks patients' heart and breathing rate by beaming Doppler radar technology into their chests. The device, which senses radio frequency electromagnetic waves reflected from the body's surface, only requires that the white device face the patient to work. One day, Kaiser imagines that the technology could become advanced enough that vital signs could be scanned into smartphones.

Worried about grandma taking a spill while left unattended in her hospital room? Kaiser hopes to give vulnerable patients "fall detectors" that sense when they have tumbled to the ground. When a patient falls, nurses and doctors are alerted.

A screen strategically placed by the bedside could act as a communications device for doctors and nurses to check in with patients, for patients to say hello to others in the building, for doctors to communicate with other doctors in the building, and more. Eventually it could, for example, allow patients to have a consultation with a specialist on the other side of the country.

This device, manufactured by iRobot (the same people behind the Roomba), doesn't clean floors--instead, it acts as a patient-tracking mobile surveillance device.

SRI International's M7 surgery bot, originally developed by DARPA to perform surgery on the battlefield, is a telepresence surgery device that allows doctors to perform surgical procedures from anywhere in the world via Ethernet or radio link.

The M7 bot's controls are intuitive for surgeons--the device offers force feedback-equipped controls as well as high definition sound and optics. SRI imagines that the technology could be used to handle infectious pathogens in biosafety labs, provide medical care for astronauts, and even diffuse bombs. For non-medical applications, the M7 could cost under $50,000, but it will be significantly more expensive for medical uses.

Developed by a Montreal-based company called Kinova, the JACO robotic manipulator arm is intended for people who have use of their fingers but not their arms (i.e patients with ALS, spinal cord injuries, or muscular dystrophy). The arm has six degrees of freedom, and an intuitive joystick controls that allows users to easily move the arm up, down, sideways, and clasp objects with the attached fingers and hand.

JACO is already on sale for $35,000. Look for it soon in your local rehab clinic.