RAPID: Robot-assisted Doffing of Personal Protective Equipment

这项快速反应研究的目标是创建一个人-机器人系统，帮助治疗埃博拉的卫生保健工作者“脱下”（即移除）个人防护装备。由于个人防护装备有多层衣服，涉及许多步骤，并且必须经常在压力条件下重复脱衣，因此该过程对卫生保健工作者造成重大感染风险。该建议寻求使用机器人来最大限度地减少工人的手（戴着手套）与个人防护装备之间的接触，因为这种接触可能会扩大个人防护装备被污染的区域，从而增加工人感染的风险。为了实现这一目标，PI和co-PI寻求开发操作策略和原语，使机器人能够通过使用其手作为钩子、支架和夹子来辅助落纱过程，以便卫生保健工作者在落纱过程中尽可能少地使用他们的手。这项工作将在与医疗专业人员密切协商的情况下进行，以确保所制定的程序既安全又优于人工落纱过程。

The goal of this Rapid Response Research is to create a human-robot system that will assist in the ``doffing'' (i.e., removal) of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) worn by health-care workers treating Ebola. Because the PPE has multiple layers of clothing and involves numerous steps, and because doffing must be repeated often under stressful conditions, the process poses a significant risk of infection for health-care workers. This proposal seeks to use a robot to minimize the amount of contact between the worker's hands (covered with gloves) and the PPE, as this contact may enlarge the areas of the PPE that are contaminated and thus increase the risk of infecting the worker. To accomplish this goal, the PI and co-PI seek to develop manipulation strategies and primitives that will allow the robot to assist in the doffing process by using its hands as hooks, braces, and clamps so that the health-care worker uses their hands as little as possible during the doffing process. The work will be performed in close consultation with medical professionals to ensure that the developed procedures are both safe and provide an advantage over the manual doffing process.