Design of a Low-Cost Miniature Robot to Assist the COVID-19 Nasopharyngeal Swab Sampling

Wang, Shuangyi; Wang, Kehao; Tang, Ruijie; Qiao, Jingzhe; Liu, Hongbin; Hou, Zeng-Guang

doi:10.1109/tmrb.2020.3036461

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Regarding the pure area of application, in [ 14 ], the authors illustrate an application for swabbing through a low-cost robot. They show the development and the product.…”

Section: Applications Findings and New Research Lines In The Academimentioning

confidence: 99%

Robots as intelligent assistants to face COVID-19 pandemic

Seidita

Lanza²,

Pipitone³

et al. 2020

Briefings in Bioinformatics

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Motivation The epidemic at the beginning of this year, due to a new virus in the coronavirus family, is causing many deaths and is bringing the world economy to its knees. Moreover, situations of this kind are historically cyclical. The symptoms and treatment of infected patients are, for better or worse even for new viruses, always the same: more or less severe flu symptoms, isolation and full hygiene. By now man has learned how to manage epidemic situations, but deaths and negative effects continue to occur. What about technology? What effect has the actual technological progress we have achieved? In this review, we wonder about the role of robotics in the fight against COVID. It presents the analysis of scientific articles, industrial initiatives and project calls for applications from March to now highlighting how much robotics was ready to face this situation, what is expected from robots and what remains to do. Results The analysis was made by focusing on what research groups offer as a means of support for therapies and prevention actions. We then reported some remarks on what we think is the state of maturity of robotics in dealing with situations like COVID-19.

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“…Regarding the pure area of application, in [ 14 ], the authors illustrate an application for swabbing through a low-cost robot. They show the development and the product.…”

Section: Applications Findings and New Research Lines In The Academimentioning

confidence: 99%

Robots as intelligent assistants to face COVID-19 pandemic

Seidita

Lanza²,

Pipitone³

et al. 2020

Briefings in Bioinformatics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, if one is exhibiting symptoms of infection, they must get tested. However, carrying out swab sampling for testing can be dangerous for healthcare staff as they have a high risk of infection due to the close person-to-person contact [27]. To combat this, the use of nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing robots can reduce the spread of infection as well as allow healthcare staff to focus on higher priority tasks.…”

Section: Covid-19 Monitoring and Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response to this many nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing, robots have been developed to cater for testing. For instance, Wang et al [27] introduced a preliminary, low-cost miniature robot to assist with nasopharyngeal sampling (Figure 7a). The robot is 3D printed and has an active 2-degree of freedom (DOF) end-effector for actuating a swab and a generic 6-DOF passive arm for global positioning.…”

Section: Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The performance of the robot was verified, and the force needed for the procedure was quantified by performing nasopharyngeal swabs on a commercial nasopharynx phantom and pig noses. Wang et al [27] determined that the forces used were within the robot's maximum payload and sensing range of the gripper used. However, this study was preliminary-testing was carried out on phantom designs and pig noses-so more work must be conducted on real participants.…”

Section: Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Service Robots in the Healthcare Sector

et al. 2021

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Traditionally, advances in robotic technology have been in the manufacturing industry due to the need for collaborative robots. However, this is not the case in the service sectors, especially in the healthcare sector. The lack of emphasis put on the healthcare sector has led to new opportunities in developing service robots that aid patients with illnesses, cognition challenges and disabilities. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for the development of service robots in the healthcare sector in an attempt to overcome the difficulties and hardships caused by this virus. The use of service robots are advantageous as they not only prevent the spread of infection, and reduce human error but they also allow front-line staff to reduce direct contact, focusing their attention on higher priority tasks and creating separation from direct exposure to infection. This paper presents a review of various types of robotic technologies and their uses in the healthcare sector. The reviewed technologies are a collaboration between academia and the healthcare industry, demonstrating the research and testing needed in the creation of service robots before they can be deployed in real-world applications and use cases. We focus on how robots can provide benefits to patients, healthcare workers, customers, and organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we investigate the emerging focal issues of effective cleaning, logistics of patients and supplies, reduction of human errors, and remote monitoring of patients to increase system capacity, efficiency, resource equality in hospitals, and related healthcare environments.

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“…Besides, the sterilizability of the robot to prevent cross-infection should also be considered ( Porter et al, 2020 ). Currently, the swab sampling robots are under development around the world ( Wang et al, 2020 ), with some of them being preliminarily applied in the clinic ( Li et al, 2020b ). However, due to the research activities’ limitation, most of the robots are still incomplete with a simple structure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Flexible Transoral Robot Towards COVID-19 Swab Sampling

Xiao

et al. 2021

Front. Robot. AI

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There are high risks of infection for surgeons during the face-to-face COVID-19 swab sampling due to the novel coronavirus’s infectivity. To address this issue, we propose a flexible transoral robot with a teleoperated configuration for swab sampling. The robot comprises a flexible manipulator, an endoscope with a monitor, and a master device. A 3-prismatic-universal (3-PU) flexible parallel mechanism with 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) is used to realize the manipulator’s movements. The flexibility of the manipulator improves the safety of testees. Besides, the master device is similar to the manipulator in structure. It is easy to use for operators. Under the guidance of the vision from the endoscope, the surgeon can operate the master device to control the swab’s motion attached to the manipulator for sampling. In this paper, the robotic system, the workspace, and the operation procedure are described in detail. The tongue depressor, which is used to prevent the tongue’s interference during the sampling, is also tested. The accuracy of the manipulator under visual guidance is validated intuitively. Finally, the experiment on a human phantom is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the robot preliminarily.

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Design of a Low-Cost Miniature Robot to Assist the COVID-19 Nasopharyngeal Swab Sampling

Cited by 64 publications

References 9 publications

Robots as intelligent assistants to face COVID-19 pandemic

Robots as intelligent assistants to face COVID-19 pandemic

Service Robots in the Healthcare Sector

A Flexible Transoral Robot Towards COVID-19 Swab Sampling

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