If the idea of R2D2 changing your bedpan isn't appealing, you can be sure it's one job that nurses won't miss. It's just one of the tasks that a robo-nurse is being designed to do in a collaboration between the University of Auckland and local artificial intelligence experts at Robot-Hosting.

The engineers are merging new computer software with an off-the-shelf robot from Samsung to create a robot nurse capable of carrying out simple tasks such as reading a bar-coded medication list and matching it to a patient.

The robot can recognise faces, speak multiple languages and talk with other robots over the airwaves, and it doesn't mind dealing with a hospital's messier jobs.

"It's an interesting combination of electrical and computer science, combined with psychology," says Dr Santokh Singh, the research manager for the project at the University of Auckland.

The university hopes the robot will eventually alleviate nursing shortages. By using a wireless network to connect groups of robots to a central server cluster, nursebots could be cheaper too-around $1,000 each. "We believe it can be done," says Singh. "We have all the threads, we just need to pull them together."

The robots are intended only as an aid to the nursing industry, and while the robot will be able to respond sympathetically to patients, it's no substitute for Florence Nightingale.

"Human nurses have no need to fear for their jobs yet," says Shahin Maghsoudi of Robot-Hosting. "The robots are just designed to make their job easier."