Research

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17 pages, 5039 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of Serious Games for the Rehabilitation of the Human Vertebral Spine for Home Care

by Rogério Sales Gonçalves, Rodrigo Alves Prado, Guênia Mara Vieira Ladeira and Andréa Licre Pessina Gasparini

Robotics 2023, 12(2), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics12020058 - 12 Apr 2023

Viewed by 1774

Abstract

With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of the conventional equipment and [...] Read more.

With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of the conventional equipment and the need for specialized labor to operate it. Thus, this paper aimed to develop serious games to assist health professionals in the physiotherapy of patients with spinal pain for clinical and home applications. Serious games integrate serious aspects such as teaching, rehabilitation, and information with the playful and interactive elements of video games. Despite the positive indication and benefits of physiotherapy for cases of chronic spinal pain, the long treatment time, social isolation due to pandemics, and lack of motivation to use traditional methods are some of the main causes of therapeutic failure. Using Unity 3D (version 2019.4.24f1) software and a personal computer with a webcam, we developed aesthetically pleasing, smooth, and attractive games, while maintaining the essence of seriousness that is required for rehabilitation. The serious games, controlled using OpenPose (version v1.0.0alpha-1.5.0) software, were tested with a healthy volunteer. The findings demonstrated that the proposed games can be used as a playful tool to motivate patients during physiotherapy and to reduce cases of treatment abandonment, including at home. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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17 pages, 20371 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Human-Centered Navigation and Person-Following with Omnidirectional Robot for Indoor Assistance and Monitoring

by Andrea Eirale, Mauro Martini and Marcello Chiaberge

Robotics 2022, 11(5), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11050108 - 10 Oct 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2286

Abstract

Robot assistants and service robots are rapidly spreading out as cutting-edge automation solutions to support people in their everyday life in workplaces, health centers, and domestic environments. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically increased the need for service technology to help medical personnel in [...] Read more.

Robot assistants and service robots are rapidly spreading out as cutting-edge automation solutions to support people in their everyday life in workplaces, health centers, and domestic environments. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically increased the need for service technology to help medical personnel in critical conditions in hospitals and domestic scenarios. The first requirement for an assistive robot is to navigate and follow the user in dynamic environments in complete autonomy. However, these advanced multitask behaviors require flexible mobility of the platform to accurately avoid obstacles in cluttered spaces while tracking the user. This paper presents a novel human-centered navigation system that successfully combines a real-time visual perception system with the mobility advantages provided by an omnidirectional robotic platform to precisely adjust the robot orientation and monitor a person while navigating. Our extensive experimentation conducted in a representative indoor scenario demonstrates that our solution offers efficient and safe motion planning for person-following and, more generally, for human-centered navigation tasks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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12 pages, 2045 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Requirements and Solutions for Motion Limb Assistance of COVID-19 Patients

by Marco Ceccarelli, Matteo Bottin, Matteo Russo, Giulio Rosati, Med Amine Laribi and Victor Petuya

Robotics 2022, 11(2), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11020045 - 04 Apr 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2472

Abstract

COVID-19 patients are strongly affected in terms of limb motion when imbedded during the acute phase of the infection, but also during the course of recovery therapies. Peculiarities are investigated for design requirements for medical devices in limb motion assistance for those patients. [...] Read more.

COVID-19 patients are strongly affected in terms of limb motion when imbedded during the acute phase of the infection, but also during the course of recovery therapies. Peculiarities are investigated for design requirements for medical devices in limb motion assistance for those patients. Solutions are analyzed from existing medical devices to outline open issues to provide guidelines for the proper adaption or for new designs supporting patients against COVID-19 effects. Examples are reported from authors’ activities with cable driven assisting devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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13 pages, 2652 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Novel Reconfigurable Spherical Parallel Mechanisms with a Circular Rail

by Pavel Laryushkin, Anton Antonov, Alexey Fomin and Victor Glazunov

Robotics 2022, 11(2), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11020030 - 22 Feb 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3215

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented stress on the world healthcare system and demonstrated the need for modern automated robotic solutions for numerous medical applications. Often, robots that provide spherical motion of the end-effector are used in this area. In this paper, we [...] Read more.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented stress on the world healthcare system and demonstrated the need for modern automated robotic solutions for numerous medical applications. Often, robots that provide spherical motion of the end-effector are used in this area. In this paper, we discuss a spherical mechanism with a circular rail and provide several possible variations of the design: spherical robots with three or four legs and 4-DOF robots with an additional translational DOF, including a decoupled mechanism. The screw theory is used to analyze the mobility of the discussed mechanisms, and their advantages and drawbacks are discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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17 pages, 1722 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Simulation Study of a Planar Cable-Driven Parallel Robot to Transport Supplies for Patients with Contagious Diseases in Health Care Centers

by Marco Carpio, Roque Saltaren, Julio Viola, Cecilia García, Juan Guerra, Juan Cely and Cristian Calderón

Robotics 2021, 10(4), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10040111 - 30 Sep 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3718

Abstract

Currently, a large number of investigations are being carried out in the area of robotics focused on proposing solutions in the field of health, and many of them have directed their efforts on issues related to the health emergency due to COVID-19. Considering [...] Read more.

Currently, a large number of investigations are being carried out in the area of robotics focused on proposing solutions in the field of health, and many of them have directed their efforts on issues related to the health emergency due to COVID-19. Considering that one of the ways to reduce the risk of contagion is by avoiding contact and closeness between people when exchanging supplies such as food, medicine, clothing, etc., this work proposes the use of a planar cable-driven parallel robot for the transport of supplies in hospitals whose room distribution has planar architecture. The robot acts in accordance with a procedure proposed for each task to be carried out, which includes the process of disinfection (based on Ultraviolet-C light) of the supplies transported inside the robot’s end effector. The study presents a design proposal for the geometry of the planar cable-driven parallel robots and its end effector, as well as the software simulations that allow evaluating the robot’s movement trajectories and the responses of the position control system based on Fuzzy-PID controllers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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13 pages, 5011 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Paquitop.arm, a Mobile Manipulator for Assessing Emerging Challenges in the COVID-19 Pandemic Scenario

by Giovanni Colucci, Luigi Tagliavini, Luca Carbonari, Paride Cavallone, Andrea Botta and Giuseppe Quaglia

Robotics 2021, 10(3), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10030102 - 14 Aug 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4099

Abstract

The use of automation and robotics technologies for caregiving and assistance has become a very interesting research topic in the field of robotics. The spread of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of social distancing in hospitals and health centers, and collaborative robotics can [...] Read more.

The use of automation and robotics technologies for caregiving and assistance has become a very interesting research topic in the field of robotics. The spread of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of social distancing in hospitals and health centers, and collaborative robotics can bring substantial improvements in terms of sparing health workers basic operations. Thus, researchers from Politecnico di Torino are working on Paquitop.arm, a mobile robot for assistive tasks. The purpose of this paper is to present a system composed of an omnidirectional mobile platform, a 6 DOF robot arm, and a depth camera. Task-oriented considerations are made to estimate a set of mounting parameters that represents a trade-off between the exploitation of the robot arm workspace and the compactness of the entire system. To this end, dexterity and force transmission indexes are introduced to study both the kinematic and the static behavior of the manipulator as a function of the mounting parameters. Finally, to avoid singularities during the execution of the task, the platform approach to the task workspaces is studied. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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16 pages, 2466 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Smart Cleaner: A New Autonomous Indoor Disinfection Robot for Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Kaicheng Ruan, Zehao Wu and Qingsong Xu

Robotics 2021, 10(3), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10030087 - 12 Jul 2021

Cited by 37 | Viewed by 12160

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic imposes an increasing demand for service robots as a substitute for humans to conduct various types of work in contaminated areas. Such work includes logistics, patient care, and disinfection, which can reduce the risk of human exposure to the highly [...] Read more.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposes an increasing demand for service robots as a substitute for humans to conduct various types of work in contaminated areas. Such work includes logistics, patient care, and disinfection, which can reduce the risk of human exposure to the highly contagious and deadly virus. This paper presents the design and development of Smart Cleaner, which is a new cost-effective autonomous indoor disinfection robot. It integrates a wheeled mobile robot platform and a hydrogen peroxide atomization device for automated disinfection operation in the complex indoor environment. Through the system integration of various hardware components and software programming, a prototype of the disinfection robot has been fabricated for experimental investigation. A simulation study of the drymist hydrogen peroxide disinfection model was carried out to understand the diffusion of disinfectant in a room environment. The effectiveness of the developed robot was verified in practical scenarios, such as hospital, hotel, office, and laboratory. The effect of disinfection was validated by a qualified third-party testing agency. Results demonstrate the high efficiency of the developed disinfection robot dedicated to autonomous indoor disinfection work. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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Review

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23 pages, 1757 KiB

Open AccessReview

Socially Assistive Robots Helping Older Adults through the Pandemic and Life after COVID-19

by Cristina Getson and Goldie Nejat

Robotics 2021, 10(3), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10030106 - 13 Sep 2021

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 9816

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has critically impacted the health and safety of the population of the world, especially the health and well-being of older adults. Socially assistive robots (SARs) have been used to help to mitigate the effects of the pandemic including loneliness and [...] Read more.

The COVID-19 pandemic has critically impacted the health and safety of the population of the world, especially the health and well-being of older adults. Socially assistive robots (SARs) have been used to help to mitigate the effects of the pandemic including loneliness and isolation, and to alleviate the workload of both formal and informal caregivers. This paper presents the first extensive survey and discussion on just how socially assistive robots have specifically helped this population, as well as the overall impact on health and the acceptance of such robots during the pandemic. The goal of this review is to answer research questions with respect to which SARs were used during the pandemic and what specific tasks they were used for, and what the enablers and barriers were to the implementation of SARs during the pandemic. We will also discuss lessons learned from their use to inform future SAR design and applications, and increase their usefulness and adoption in a post-pandemic world. More research is still needed to investigate and appreciate the user experience of older adults with SARs during the pandemic, and we aim to provide a roadmap for researchers and stakeholders. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic)

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