ABSTRACT
The use of robotic systems for doctor-patient interaction during Covid-19 and in post-pandemic phases has been proven useful. On the other hand, in current implementations, teleoperating a robot in critical contexts such as the medical scenario may induce a high mental workload on the operator, mainly due to the need to adapt to the remote control of a complex robot, and the reduced environmental awareness. Furthermore, robotic platforms for telemedicine do not usually offer the possibility of establishing physical contact with the patient, which may indeed be useful to show how to assume a certain posture, or to guide a specific movement. The aim of this work is to overcome these limitations, by creating a framework in which the arms, the head, and the base of a humanoid robot can be easily teleoperated with a rapid learning curve and a low mental workload for the operator. The proposed approach is based on the real-time human pose estimation of the operator, which is calculated in real-time and transformed into correspondent skeleton joint angles, used as input to control the upper body joints of the Softbank Robotics robot Pepper. Experiments with users have been performed to check the effectiveness of the imitation system, by verifying the similarity between the human and robot pose and measuring its usability and perceived workload. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
With the popularity of the metaverse, researchers are turning to augmented reality and virtual reality to innovate their recent pain points, particularly healthcare issues during COVID-19. At the same time, social robots can be a great tool for alleviating many challenges during the pandemic. However, before the integrated technology's possibilities for the metaverse and social robots can be suitably harnessed, certain recent developments for integration during the pandemic should be addressed. For this reason, this paper proposes a new systematic summary of pioneering social robotic systems using the metaverse through immersive experiences from an interdisciplinary healthcare perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak. We also highlight social robots to deal with medical healthcare issues during the virus outbreak both elderly adults and younger people. Moreover, we compare recent metaverse-driven social robotic works for dealing with assisted living and healthcare issues through telepresence and remote interaction during COVID-19. Ultimately, we provide a recommendation and forecast a future scenario for the integration between socially interactive robots and metaverse technology to improve and help the quality of life both in the current COVID-19 situation and in the post-COVID-19 society. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic has devastated the generation and impacted multiple layers of the healthcare sector. Resulting from this kind of exceptionally contagious virus and a shortfall of medical workers in the hospitals, front-line health workers, and patients are at risk. Thus, with an aim to diminish the risk of infections, a mobile robotic system is proposed that can autonomously ensure safety and protection in the hospital. The system can monitor the patients by moving autonomously and sanitizing the floor throughout the hospital, which is implemented by Robot Operating System (ROS), SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithm, and A∗ search algorithm, and then it uses the MobileNetV2 algorithm for safety mask detection and giving voice alert. The system also offers AI voice communication to assist and diagnose the patients, which can lessen person-to-person contact. The system has anticipated 89% accuracy for AI custom dataset, whereas the validation accuracy for face mask detection is 95%. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 epidemic has been deemed a pandemic by the World Health Organization. It is triggered due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It originated and spread from Wuhan, China, in December 2019. At present, the entire world is struggling from this virus due to large confirmed positive and death cases of COVID-19. People of every nation have been isolated, and lockdowns are instituted. Despite the introduction of several precautionary measures, the spread of the virus is still increasing at an alarming pace. Although promising development has been made for the development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, no vaccines have been reported to cure the infection. Different antiviral therapies have also been attempted but do not seem to be successful for every patient. To deter the dissemination and control the spread of virus, the frontline healthcare staff and police officers deployed numerous autonomous systems for an increased line of protection. Robots are deployed to conduct different operations including decontamination, package delivery, etc. It also acts as a mediator for two-way communication between the doctors and patients. Recent advancement in robotics for its application in healthcare facilities has been found very effective for the healthcare officials to communicate with the virus affected patients, and this literature has addressed it. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Teleoperation of robotic systems for precise and delicate object grasping requires high-fidelity haptic feedback to obtain comprehensive real-time information about the grasp. In such cases, the most common approach is to use kinesthetic feedback. However, a single contact point information is insufficient to detect the dynamically changing shape of soft objects. This paper proposes a novel telemanipulation system that provides kinesthetic and cutaneous stimuli to the user's hand to achieve accurate liquid dispensing by dexterously manipulating the deformable object (i.e., pipette). The experimental results revealed that the proposed approach to provide the user with multimodal haptic feedback considerably improves the quality of dosing with a remote pipette. Compared with pure visual feedback, the relative dosing error decreased by 66% and task execution time decreased by 18% when users manipulated the deformable pipette with a multimodal haptic interface in combination with visual feedback. The proposed technology can be potentially implemented in delicate dosing procedures during the antibody tests for COVID-19, chemical experiments, operation with organic materials, and telesurgery. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Health-care professionals play an essential role in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, most of the collected Covid-19 specimens are collected manually by health care workers and by using sterile cotton swab. The close contact between the health workers and the patients put them at high risk of being infected. One of approaches toward protecting the health workers, is to reduce the direct contact between the health care workers and the Covid-19 patients through deploying robots. In this study, a robotic system for Covid-19 swab sampling is designed and built. The robotic system consists of a 3 DOF arm, 2 DOF end effector with force sensor, and head holder. The robot is controlled remotely and from a safe distance. The preliminary experimental tests show that the robot is able to position the swab tip at the opening of the nasal cavity with the orientation and location that makes the swab insertion parallel to the palate. A force sensor is integrated in the end effector design to measure the normal contact force between the swab tip and the interior of the nasal cavity. The experimental results show that the normal contact force was successfully controlled and maintained within the acceptable force range, between 0.35N and 0.68N, as reported in literature. Maintaining the contact force within such range is essential in protecting the interior tissue of the nasal cavity from any injury © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Exploring planets requires cooperative robotics technologies that make it possible to act independently of human influence. So-called multi-robot teams, consisting of different and synchronized robots, can solve problems that cannot be handled by a single robot. The PRO-ACT (Planetary RObots deployed for Assembly and Construction Tasks) project aimed to develop and demonstrate key technologies for robot collaboration in the construction of future ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) facilities on the Moon. To this end, the following robots were used: Veles-a rover with six wheels and a 7-DoF (Degree of Freedom) arm, Mantis-a six-legged walking system, and a mobile gantry that can be used for payload manipulation or 3D printing. The project further developed existing software and hardware developed in previous space robotics projects and integrated them into the robotic systems involved. The software enables collaborative tasks such as transportation, mapping and navigation. Due to the Covid-19 situation, the final demonstration was performed remotely for defined mission scenarios. The intensive remote test campaigns provided valuable lessons learned that are directly applicable to future space missions. In addition, PRO-ACT opens a new way for multi-robot collaboration. The paper describes the developed robotic software and hardware as well as the final mission scenarios performed in lunar analogues with Mantis tested in the test field with granules in the DFKI Space Hall in Bremen, Germany, with Veles tested in Warsaw, Poland and with the mobile gantry tested in Elgoibar, Spain. In addition one mission scenario, manipulation tasks with two robotic systems, was performed with two Panda robotic arms in Toulouse, France. The paper concludes with the results of the final demonstration of the multi-robotics team. © 2021 International Astronautical Federation, IAF. All rights reserved.