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类机器人系统，将有助于“脱纱”（即，（e）移除治疗埃博拉的医护人员穿戴的个人防护设备。由于个人防护设备有多层衣服，涉及许多步骤，而且脱衣服必须在紧张的条件下经常重复，因此这一过程对卫生保健工作者构成了很大的感染风险。该提议寻求使用机器人来最小化工人的手（覆盖有手套）与PPE之间的接触量，因为这种接触可能扩大PPE的被污染的区域，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、支架和夹具来辅助落纱过程，以便医护人员在落纱过程中尽可能少地使用手。这项工作将在与医疗专业人员密切协商的情况下进行，以确保开发的程序既安全又比人工落纱过程更有优势。

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.