RAPID: Tele-Nursing Robots for Remote Treatment of Ebola Patients

埃博拉危机中的医护人员由于与患者的日常互动而面临感染风险。这些工人在处理受污染材料时穿戴防护装备以保护自己。但是，这种齿轮可以是具有挑战性的安全删除。该奖项设想远程控制机器人可以在危险的临床区域内执行常见的护理职责。如果成功的话，这种方法可以大大减少医护人员接触传染病和其他生物危害的频率。这个项目将开发一个原型移动的机械手机器人，一个人类操作员？的控制台和操作员辅助算法，以自动化或部分自动化繁琐和容易出错的任务。研究开始时将咨询医疗专业人员，以建立埃博拉治疗临床任务的优先级列表，并在研究结束时评估原型。研究将在机械设计、传感器、运动规划和控制、人机交互和机器人系统集成等领域探索远程护理概念。复杂任务的远程操作，特别是在高度非工程环境中的双手操作，仍然是一个重大的研究挑战，同时也将在人工引导操作的操作员辅助算法方面做出贡献。 该研究也直接适用于其他传染病场景。 改进操作员界面还可以进一步加深我们对其他领域中的人类控制机器人的了解，例如家庭服务，太空机器人以及工业和物流中的材料处理。

Healthcare workers in the Ebola crisis are at risk for infection due to routine interactions with patients. These workers wear protective gear to protect them while handling contaminated material. But this gear can be challenging to remove safely. This award envisions that remote-controlled robots could perform common nursing duties inside hazardous clinical areas. If successful, this approach could significantly reduce the frequency with which healthcare workers are exposed to contagions and other biohazards. This project will develop a prototype mobile manipulator robot, a human operator?s console, and operator assistance algorithms to automate or partially-automate tedious and error-prone tasks. Medical professionals will be consulted at the start of the study to establish a prioritized list of clinical tasks for Ebola treatment, and at the end of the study to evaluate the prototype.The research will explore the tele-nursing concept across the fields of mechanical design, sensors, motion planning and control, human-robot interaction, and robot system integration. Tele-operation of complex tasks, in particular, bimanual manipulation in highly non-engineered environments, is still a major research challenge, while contribution will be made also in algorithms for operator assistance for human-guided manipulation. The research is directly applicable to other infectious disease scenarios as well. Improving operator interfaces may also further our knowledge of human-controlled robots in other fields, such as household service, space robots, and material handling in industry and logistics.