As a result of the difficulties brought by COVID-19 and its associated lockdowns, many individuals and companies have turned to robots in order to overcome the challenges of the pandemic. Compared with traditional human labor, robotic and autonomous systems have advantages such as an intrinsic immunity to the virus and an inability for human-robot-human spread of any disease-causing pathogens, though there are still many technical hurdles for the robotics industry to overcome. This survey comprehensively reviews over 200 reports covering robotic systems which have emerged or have been repurposed during the past several months, to provide insights to both academia and industry. In each chapter, we cover both the advantages and the challenges for each robot, finding that robotics systems are overall apt solutions for dealing with many of the problems brought on by COVID-19, including: diagnosis, screening, disinfection, surgery, telehealth, care, logistics, manufacturing and broader interpersonal problems unique to the lockdowns of the pandemic. By discussing the potential new robot capabilities and fields they applied to, we expect the robotics industry to take a leap forward due to this unexpected pandemic.

SUMMARYUsing weighted discretization with the modified equivalent partial differential equation approach, several accurate finite difference methods are developed to solve the two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation following the success of its application to the one-dimensional case. These new methods are compared with the conventional finite difference methods in terms of stability and accuracy. The new methods are more accurate and often more stable than the conventional schemes. KEY WORDS 2D Advection-diffusion equation Finite difference method Weighted discretization Modified equivalent PDE approach Stability Accuracy

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