This article analyses data collected on 338 instances of robots used explicitly in response to COVID-19 from 24 Jan, 2020, to 23 Jan, 2021, in 48 countries. The analysis was guided by four overarching questions: 1) What were robots used for in the COVID-19 response? 2) When were they used? 3) How did different countries innovate? and 4) Did having a national policy on robotics influence a country's innovation and insertion of robotics for COVID-19? The findings indicate that robots were used for six different sociotechnical work domains and 29 discrete use cases. When robots were used varied greatly on the country; although many countries did report an increase at the beginning of their first surge. To understand the findings of how innovation occurred, the data was examined through the lens of the technology's maturity according to NASA's Technical Readiness Assessment metrics. Through this lens, findings note that existing robots were used for more than 78% of the instances; slightly modified robots made up 10%; and truly novel robots or novel use cases constituted 12% of the instances. The findings clearly indicate that countries with a national robotics initiative were more likely to use robotics more often and for broader purposes. Finally, the dataset and analysis produces a broad set of implications that warrant further study and investigation. The results from this analysis are expected to be of value to the robotics and robotics policy community in preparing robots for rapid insertion into future disasters.
Objective: The status of human-robot collaboration for assembly applications is reviewed and key current challenges for the research community and practitioners are presented. Background: As the pandemic of COVID-19 started to surface the manufacturers went under pressure to address demand challenges. Social distancing measures made fewer people available to work. In such situations, robots were pointed at to support humans to address a shortage in supply. An important activity where humans are needed in a manufacturing value chain is assembly. HRC assembly systems are supposed to safeguard co…
Google U.K.（谷歌英国）；Vienna University of Technology（维也纳工业大学）；Lincoln University（林肯大学）；University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学）
This volume is the proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction, held at the AISB Convention 2016, which took place on the 5th and 6th of April 2016, in Sheffield, U.K. Organised by Maha Salem (Google U.K.), Astrid Weiss (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Paul Baxter (Lincoln University, U.K.), and Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, U.K.).
University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；Amazon Robotics（亚马逊机器人公司）
This paper describes the methodology and outcomes of a series of educational events conducted in 2021 which leveraged robot swarms to educate high-school and university students about epidemiological models and how they can inform societal and governmental policies. With a specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, the events consisted of 4 online and 3 in-person workshops where students had the chance to interact with a swarm of 20 custom-built brushbots -- small-scale vibration-driven robots optimized for portability and robustness. Through the analysis of data collected during a post-event su…
Medical robots can play an important role in mitigating the spread of infectious diseases and delivering quality care to patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods and procedures involving medical robots in the continuum of care, ranging from disease prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and homecare have been extensively deployed and also present incredible opportunities for future development. This paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art, highlighting the enabling technologies and unmet needs for prospective technological advances within the next 5-10 years. We …
The 5th edition of the International Conference on Cloud and Robotics (ICCR 2018 - http://cloudrobotics.info) will be held on November 12-14 2018 in Paris and Saint-Quentin, France. The conference is a co-event with GDR ALROB and the industry exposition Robonumerique (http://www.robonumerique.fr). The domain of cloud robotics aims to converge robots with computation, storage and communication resources provided by the cloud. The cloud may complement robotic resources in several ways, including crowd-sourcing knowledge databases, context information, computational offloading or data-intensive i…
Hochschule Ulm（乌尔姆应用技术大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；IRD（法国发展研究院）；UPMC（巴黎第六大学）
Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob'12), held at the 2012 International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR 2012), November 2012 in Tsukuba, Japan. The main topics of the workshop were Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Architecture (MDA) for robotics. A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within that domain. …
Northeastern University（东北大学）；University of Picardie Jules Verne（皮卡第儒勒·凡尔纳大学）；Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；Mines-Telecom Institute（巴黎高科矿业电信学院）；University of Montpellier（蒙彼利埃大学）；Griffith University（格里菲斯大学）；RoboConsult；iRobot；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University（皮埃尔和玛丽·居里大学）；Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies（圣安娜高等研究院）；Tampere University of Technology（坦佩雷理工大学）；Rovira i Virgili University（罗维拉·维尔吉利大学）；INSA Lyon（里昂国家应用科学学院）；University of Caen-Lower Normandy（卡昂-下诺曼底大学）；University of Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学）；Ecole des Mines d’Alès（阿莱斯高等矿业学校）
The 3rd International conference on Cloud and Robotics (ICCR2016) was held November 23-23, 2016 in Saint Quentin (France). ICCR is the premier gathering of practitioners and researchers interested in how to bring the power of Cloud computing and Robotics to a new cutting-edge domain: Cloud robotics. The objective of ICCR is a working conference, where together Cloud computing and robotics researchers/practitioners to exchange their ideas. Different with traditional academic conference, ICCR is also a forum for researchers and practitioners in the two disciplines, fostering the collaboration of…
Hochschule Ulm（乌尔姆应用技术大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；IRD（法国发展研究院）；UPMC（巴黎第六大学）；MSI-IFI
The Fourth International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob'13) was held in conjunction with the 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2013), November 2013 in Tokyo, Japan. The main topics of the workshop were Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Software Development (MDSD) for robotics. A domain-specific language is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within that domain. Model-driven so…
University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；UMMISCO (IRD/UPMC/IFI)（UMMISCO（法国发展研究院/巴黎第六大学/法国计算机工程学院））
Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob'11), held in conjunction with the 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), September 2011 in San Francisco, USA. The main topics of the workshop were Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Software Development (MDSD) for robotics. A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within tha…
Maintaining social distancing norms between humans has become an indispensable precaution to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. We present a novel method to automatically detect pairs of humans in a crowded scenario who are not adhering to the social distance constraint, i.e. about 6 feet of space between them. Our approach makes no assumption about the crowd density or pedestrian walking directions. We use a mobile robot with commodity sensors, namely an RGB-D camera and a 2-D lidar to perform collision-free navigation in a crowd and estimate the distance between all detected individuals…
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University（波恩-莱茵-锡格大学）；Hochschule Ulm（乌尔姆应用技术大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；IRD（法国发展研究院）；UPMC（皮埃尔和玛丽·居里大学）
The Fifth International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob'14) was held in conjunction with the 2014 International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR 2014), October 2014 in Bergamo, Italy. The main topics of the workshop were Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Software Development (MDSD) for robotics. A domain-specific language is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within that d…
Colorado State University（科罗拉多州立大学）；Qualcomm Research（高通研究院）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；University of Freiburg（弗莱堡大学）；Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale（达勒莫勒人工智能研究所）；University of California-Merced（加州大学默塞德分校）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；LAAS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心系统分析与架构实验室）；Jaume I University（海梅一世大学）；INRIA（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；University of Utrecht（乌得勒支大学）；Simon Fraser University（西蒙菲莎大学）；University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Toyota Technical Center（丰田技术中心）；Rice University（莱斯大学）；University of Southern California（南加州大学）；George Mason University（乔治梅森大学）；University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill（北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校）；Center for Mathematical Research（数学研究中心）；Sapienza University of Rome（罗马大学）；University of New Hampshire（新罕布什尔大学）；University of Queensland（昆士兰大学）；Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学）；New York University（纽约大学）
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Robot Learning and Planning (RLP 2016)
Texas A&M University（德克萨斯A&M大学）；Florida State University（佛罗里达州立大学）
This paper reviews 262 reports appearing between March 27 and July 4, 2020, in the press, social media, and scientific literature describing 203 instances of actual use of 104 different models of ground and aerial robots for the COVID19 response. The reports are organized by stakeholders and work domain into a novel taxonomy of six application categories, reflecting major differences in work envelope, adoption strategy, and human-robot interaction constraints. Each application category is further divided into a total of 30 subcategories based on differences in mission. The largest number of re…
This conceptual paper overviews how blockchain technology is involving the operation of multi-robot collaboration for combating COVID-19 and future pandemics. Robots are a promising technology for providing many tasks such as spraying, disinfection, cleaning, treating, detecting high body temperature/mask absence, and delivering goods and medical supplies experiencing an epidemic COVID-19. For combating COVID-19, many heterogeneous and homogenous robots are required to perform different tasks for supporting different purposes in the quarantine area. Controlling and decentralizing multi-robot p…
Social isolation is one of the negative consequences of a pandemic like COVID-19. Social isolation and loneliness are not only experienced by older adults, but also by younger people who live alone and cannot communicate with others or get involved in social situations as they used to. In such situations, social companion robots might have the potential to reduce social isolation and increase well-being. However, society's perception of social robots has not always been positive. In this paper, we conducted two online experiments with 102 and 132 participants during the self isolation periods …
Hochschule Ulm（乌尔姆应用技术大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；UMI UMMISCO（UMMISCO国际联合单位）；IRD（法国国家发展研究所）；UPMC（巴黎第六大学）；MSI-IFI（MSI-IFI研究所）；Bielefeld University（比勒费尔德大学）；RWTH Aachen University（亚琛工业大学）；Ecole des Mines Douai（杜埃矿业学院）
The Sixth International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob'15) was held September 28, 2015 in Hamburg (Germany), as part of the IROS 2015 conference. The main topics of the workshop were Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Software Development (MDSD) for robotics. A domain-specific language is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within that domain. Model-driven software development offers a high-level way for domain users to s…
Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL)（自主系统实验室）；ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology（苏黎世联邦理工学院）
This article describes the hardware and software systems of the Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) platforms used by the ETH Zurich team in the 2017 Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC). The aim was to develop robust outdoor platforms with the autonomous capabilities required for the competition, by applying and integrating knowledge from various fields, including computer vision, sensor fusion, optimal control, and probabilistic robotics. This paper presents the major components and structures of the system architectures, and reports on experimental findings for the MAV-based c…
We examine the implementation of social robots in real-world settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we analyze the areas in which social robots are being adopted, the roles and tasks being fulfilled, and the robot models being implemented. For this, we traced back and analyzed 240 deployment cases with 86 different social robots worldwide that have been adopted since the coronavirus outbreak. We found that social robot adoption during this period was strongly related to the use of this technology for crisis management. The social robots' capacity to perform the roles of liaison …
The use of standard platforms in the field of humanoid robotics can lower the entry barrier for new research groups, and accelerate research by the facilitation of code sharing. Numerous humanoid standard platforms exist in the lower size ranges of up to 60cm, but beyond that humanoid robots scale up quickly in weight and price, becoming less affordable and more difficult to operate, maintain and modify. The igus Humanoid Open Platform is an affordable, fully open-source platform for humanoid research. At 92cm, the robot is capable of acting in an environment meant for humans, and is equipped …
This paper argues that training of future Roboticists and Robotics Engineers in Computer Science departments, requires the extensive direct work with real robots, and that this educational mission will be negatively impacted when access to robotics learning laboratories is curtailed. This is exactly the problem that Robotics Labs encountered in early 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic. The paper then turns to the description of a remote/virtual robotics teaching laboratory and examines in detail what that would mean, what the benefits would be, and how it may be used. Part of this vision…
Is open robotics innovation a threat to international peace and security?
Tandon School of Engineering at New York University（纽约大学Tandon工程学院）；Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute（图卢兹人工智能与自然智能研究所）；Stockholm International Peace Research Institute（斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所）
Purdue University（普渡大学）；Iowa State University（爱荷华州立大学）
The paper discusses how robots enable occupant-safe continuous protection for students when schools reopen. Conventionally, fixed air filters are not used as a key pandemic prevention method for public indoor spaces because they are unable to trap the airborne pathogens in time in the entire room. However, by combining the mobility of a robot with air filtration, the efficacy of cleaning up the air around multiple people is largely increased. A disinfection co-robot prototype is thus developed to provide continuous and occupant-friendly protection to people gathering indoors, specifically for …
University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Cambridge Biomakespace（剑桥生物制造空间）
As the COVID-19 pandemic expands, the shortening of medical equipment is swelling. A key piece of equipment getting far-out attention has been ventilators. The difference between supply and demand is substantial to be handled with normal production techniques, especially under social distancing measures in place. The study explores the rationale of human-robot teams to ramp up production using advantages of both the ease of integration and maintaining social distancing. The paper presents a model for faster integration of collaborative robots and design guidelines for workstation. The scenario…
In this paper, we consider the detection of a decrease of engagement by users spontaneously interacting with a socially assistive robot in a public space. We first describe the UE-HRI dataset that collects spontaneous Human-Robot Interactions following the guidelines provided by the Affective Computing research community to collect data "in-the-wild". We then analyze the users' behaviors, focusing on proxemics, gaze, head motion, facial expressions and speech during interactions with the robot. Finally, we investigate the use of deep learning techniques (Recurrent and Deep Neural Networks) to …
Technische Universität München（慕尼黑工业大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））；Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society（深圳市人工智能与机器人研究院）
The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) has caused mortality and morbidity worldwide. Oropharyngeal-swab (OP-swab) sampling is widely used for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in the world. To avoid the clinical staff from being affected by the virus, we developed a 9-degree-of-freedom (DOF) rigid-flexible coupling (RFC) robot to assist the COVID-19 OP-swab sampling. This robot is composed of a visual system, UR5 robot arm, micro-pneumatic actuator and force-sensing system. The robot is expected to reduce risk and free up the clinical staff from the long-term repetitive sampling work. …
University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）；UMI UMMISCO（UMI UMMISCO 国际联合实验室）；IRD（法国发展研究院）；UPMC（巴黎第六大学）；MSI-IFI（MSI-IFI研究所）；LIP6（LIP6实验室）；GOSTAI（GOSTAI公司）；University of Chile（智利大学）；CEA LIST（法国原子能委员会信息技术与系统实验室）
The First International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and models for ROBotic systems (DSLRob'10) was held at the 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'10), October 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan. The main topics of the workshop were domain-specific languages and models. A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions that increase programmer productivity within that domain. Models offer a high-level way for domain users to specify the functionality of the…
As telecommunications technology progresses, telehealth frameworks are becoming more widely adopted in the context of long-term care (LTC) for older adults, both in care facilities and in homes. Today, robots could assist healthcare workers when they provide care to elderly patients, who constitute a particularly vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous work on user-centered design of assistive technologies in LTC facilities for seniors has identified positive impacts. The need to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the benefits of this approach, but a…
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the most common symptom displayed by patients has been a fever, leading to the use of temperature scanning as a preemptive measure to detect potential carriers of the virus. Human employees with handheld thermometers have been used to fulfill this task, however this puts them at risk as they cannot be physically distanced and the sequential nature of this method leads to great inconveniences and inefficiency. The proposed solution is an autonomously navigating robot capable of conversing and scanning people's temperature to detect fevers and help screen for CO…
TU Dortmund University（多特蒙德工业大学）；Communication Networks Institute（通信网络研究所）
The integration of small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) will empower novel smart-city applications and services. After the unforeseen outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public demand for delivery services has multiplied. Mobile robotic systems inherently offer the potential for minimizing the amount of direct human-to-human interactions with the parcel delivery process. The proposed system-of-systems consists of various complex aspects such as assigning and distributing delivery jobs, establishing and maintaining reliable communication …
Worcester Polytechnic Institute（伍斯特理工学院）；MCPHS University（麻省药科与健康科学大学）；Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center（贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心）
Novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a pandemic of epic proportions and a global response to prepare health systems worldwide is of utmost importance. In addition to its cost-effectiveness in a resources-limited setting, lung ultrasound (LUS) has emerged as a rapid noninvasive imaging tool for the diagnosis of COVID-19 infected patients. Concerns surrounding LUS include the disparity of infected patients and healthcare providers, relatively small number of physicians and sonographers capable of performing LUS, and most importantly, the requirement for s…
City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）
COVID-19 pandemic has become a global challenge faced by people all over the world. Social distancing has been proved to be an effective practice to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Against this backdrop, we propose that the surveillance robots can not only monitor but also promote social distancing. Robots can be flexibly deployed and they can take precautionary actions to remind people of practicing social distancing. In this paper, we introduce a fully autonomous surveillance robot based on a quadruped platform that can promote social distancing in complex urban environments. Specifically, to…
Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院）
Nasopharyngeal (NP) swab sampling is an effective approach for the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Medical staffs carrying out the task of collecting NP specimens are in close contact with the suspected patient, thereby posing a high risk of cross-infection. We propose a low-cost miniature robot that can be easily assembled and remotely controlled. The system includes an active end-effector, a passive positioning arm, and a detachable swab gripper with integrated force sensing capability. The cost of the materials for building this robot is 55 USD and the total weight of the …
The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；T Stone Robotics Institute（T Stone机器人研究所）；Hong Kong Center for Logistics Robotics（香港物流机器人中心）
The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed serious challenges in multiple perspectives of human life. To diagnose COVID-19, oropharyngeal swab (OP SWAB) sampling is generally applied for viral nucleic acid (VNA) specimen collection. However, manual sampling exposes medical staff to a high risk of infection. Robotic sampling is promising to mitigate this risk to the minimum level, but traditional robot suffers from safety, cost, and control complexity issues for wide-scale deployment. In this work, we present soft robotic technology is promising to achieve robotic OP swab sampling with excellent swab ma…
This volume contains the proceedings of the Second Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy (AREA 2022), co-located with the 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 25th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022). The AREA workshop brings together researchers from autonomous agents, software engineering and robotic communities, as combining knowledge coming from these research areas may lead to innovative approaches that solve complex problems related with the verification and validation of autonomous robotic systems.
