(Alliance Covid-19 special program) Remotely haptic controlled medical robot for telenursing without exposure to Covid-19 virus

2019冠状病毒病大流行的海啸席卷了加拿大的医疗系统，导致许多医生和护士生病。这是前所未有的坚韧形势，如果不采取进一步行动，形势将变得更糟。原因之一是直接接触新型冠状病毒肺炎患者，个人防护设备（PPE）严重短缺。保护我们的医护人员的迫切需要激发了这项研究。考虑到全球范围内PPE的短缺将持续下去，我们提出了一种替代方法，即提供远程护理机器人。在这项研究中，我们提出了世界上第一个触觉遥控机器人，它可以与患者进行物理交互，让医生和护士在远程位置执行各种医疗服务，包括样本收集，听诊，血压和氧气监测等。最先进的7自由度机器人手臂，具有平滑的操作，新开发的机器人手实现与患者的软接触，由医护人员操作以控制机器人的触觉装置，一种人工智能（AI）算法，用于自主检测患者并与患者互动，并在检测到Covid-19病毒时提供警报。这个项目带来了三个专业合作伙伴的强大伙伴关系：我在纪念大学的研究团队，东方健康和Proax Technologies Ltd.我的研究团队一直致力于智能机器人系统和应用AI的开发，并获得了扎实的知识，取得了重大成就。东部卫生部拥有该省最大的医院和诊所网络。他们将提供实物捐助，如咨询和实验测试在他们的社区。Proax是机器人行业领先的研发机构。他们将充分参与这项研究，提供咨询，培训HQP，根据他们无与伦比的工业经验将设计付诸实际使用。我们有信心，拟议的研究将为加拿大医护人员提供有效的保护，他们是我们抗击COVID-19最可靠的前线。

The tsunami of Covid-19 pandemic has swept across Canadian healthcare systems, causing a lot of doctors and nurses to fall ill. This is an unprecedented tough situation that no one has seen before and will become even worse if no further actions are taken. One reason can be attributed is direct exposure to Covid-19 patients with severe shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment). The urgent need to protect our healthcare workers motivates this research. Considering the worldwide shortage of PPE will continue, we are proposing an alternative approach by providing telenursing robots. In this research, we are proposing the world's first haptic tele-operated robot that physically interact with patients to allow doctors and nurses in a remote location to perform various medical services including sample collection, auscultation, blood pressure and oxygen monitoring, etc. The robot is composed of several core concepts: the state-of-the-art 7 DOF robotic arm that has smooth manipulation, a newly developed robot hand to realize soft contact with patients, a haptic device that is operated by healthcare workers to control the robot, an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to autonomously detect and interact with patients, and provide an alert when Covid-19 virus is detected. This program brings the strong partnership of three professional partners: my research team at Memorial University, Eastern Health and Proax Technologies Ltd. My research team has been devoted to the development of intelligent robotic systems and applied AI, and has gained solid knowledge and achieved significant accomplishments. Eastern Health has the largest network of hospitals and clinics in the province. They will provide in-kind contributions like consultation and experimental test in their community. Proax is a leading research and development institute in robotics industry. They will be fully involved in this research in providing consultation, training HQP to implement the design into practical use based on their unrivaled industrial experiences. We are confident that the proposed research will provide an effective protection for the Canadian healthcare workers who are our most reliable frontline to combat Covid-19.