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

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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.