EAGER: Documenting and Analyzing Use of Robots for COVID-19

机器人社区需要学习并为未来的传染病和未来的灾难做好准备。了解机器人在预防、应对和减轻流行病后果方面的作用，可能对机器人研究和融合研究的未来产生深远的影响。这种理解可以确定机器人正在影响或可能影响对COVID-19大流行灾难的响应的应用。机器人专家可以专注于这些应用和空白，而相关机构可以对系统有信心。该项目将在2019冠状病毒病大流行剩余时间内指导机器人的快速创新，并通过创建和分析新闻和社交媒体报道数据库，了解世界各地如何使用地面和空中机器人进行应对，为自主机器人的未来融合研究提供信息。该项目有两个新颖的组成部分，使其区别于简单的数据收集和存档，并将确保其用于研究。首先，对全球机器人在COVID-19应对中的综合使用进行存档、管理和分析，并建立可持续的联系，以便在不断演变的大流行期间纳入新的报告，并支持其他分析。第二，新的跨学科框架将提供一套标准模式，用于获取在灾难中使用机器人的数据。该框架和工作计划不仅将确定如何使用机器人，还将利用专家独特的领域知识来识别错失的应用机会。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The robotics community needs to learn and prepare for future infectious diseases and future disasters. Understanding the role of robotics in preventing, responding to, and mitigating the consequences of pandemics could have a profound impact on the future of robotics research and convergence research in general. This understanding could identify applications where robotics are impacting, or could impact, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic disaster. Roboticists could then concentrate on those applications and gaps while the relevant agencies could have confidence in the systems. This project will guide the rapid innovation of robots for the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic and inform future convergence research on autonomous robots by creating and analyzing a database of press and social media reports on how ground and aerial robots are being used throughout the world for the response. The project has two novel components that distinguish it from simple data gathering and archiving and that will ensure its utility for research. One, by archiving, curating, and analyzing the comprehensive use of robots worldwide for COVID-19 response and creating a sustainable nexus permitting incorporation of new reports during the evolving pandemic and supporting additional analyses. Two, the novel cross-disciplinary framework will provide a standard set of schemas for capturing data on the use of robots for disasters. Not only will the framework and plan of work establish how robots are being used, it is expected to use the experts’ unique domain knowledge to identify missed opportunities for application.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.