RAPID: Robot-assisted Doffing of Personal Protective Equipment

这项快速反应研究的目标是创建一种人-机器人系统，帮助治疗埃博拉病毒的卫生保健人员穿戴的个人防护装备“脱下”(即拆除)。由于个人防护装备有多层衣物，涉及许多步骤，而且必须在有压力的条件下经常重复落纱，这一过程对医护人员构成了极大的感染风险。这项建议寻求使用机器人来最大限度地减少工人的手(用手套覆盖)与个人防护设备之间的接触量，因为这种接触可能会扩大个人防护设备受污染的区域，从而增加感染工人的风险。为了实现这一目标，PI和共同PI寻求开发操作策略和基元，使机器人能够通过将其手用作挂钩、支架和夹子来辅助道夫过程，以便医护人员在道夫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磋商的情况下进行，以确保所开发的程序既安全，又比人工脱纱过程更具优势。

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.