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

埃博拉危机中的卫生保健工作者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的材料时戴着防护装备。但要安全地卸下这种装备是很有挑战性的。该奖项设想遥控机器人可以在危险的临床区域执行常见的护理职责。如果成功，这种方法可以大大减少卫生保健工作者接触传染病和其他生物危害的频率。本项目将研制一种移动机械手机器人样机，一种人类操作者？S控制台和操作员辅助算法，以自动或部分自动执行繁琐和易出错的任务。将在研究开始时咨询医疗专业人员，以确定埃博拉治疗临床任务的优先顺序，并在研究结束时评估原型。本研究将在机械设计、传感器、运动规划与控制、人机交互、机器人系统集成等领域探讨远程护理的概念。复杂任务的远程操作，特别是在高度非工程环境中的手动操作，仍然是一个主要的研究挑战，同时也将在操作员辅助人工指导操作的算法方面做出贡献。该研究也可直接应用于其他传染病场景。改进操作界面也可以进一步加深我们对其他领域的人类控制机器人的了解，例如家庭服务，空间机器人以及工业和物流中的物料处理。

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.