RAPID: Robot-assisted Doffing of Personal Protective Equipment

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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.