Autonomous Oropharyngeal-Swab Robot System for COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to the shortage of medical personnel and the increasing need for nucleic acid testing. Manual oropharyngeal sampling is susceptible to inconsistency caused by fatigue and close contact could also cause healthcare personnel exposure and cross infection. The innate deficiency calls for a safer and more consistent way to collect the oropharyngeal samples. Therefore a fully autonomous oropharyngeal-swab robot system is proposed in this paper. The system is installed in a negative pressure chamber and carrying out a standardized sampling process to minimize individual sampling differences. A hierarchical throat detection algorithm is presented and multiple modality sensory information are fused to safely and accurately localize the optimum sampling location. Also, a force/position hybrid control method is adopted to ensure both accurate sampling and subject comfort. The robot system described in this paper can safely and efficiently collect the oropharyngeal sample, providing a scalable solution for large-scale Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Molecular sample collection for various respiratory diseases.Note to Practitioners-During the COVID-19 pandemic, prediagnostic is essential for both prevention and treatment. Existing approaches, including nasal swab and oropharyngeal-swab, require extensive medical worker training and increase the chance of cross-infection. The robot system introduced in this paper can take oropharyngeal-swab samples from subjects with minimum human intervention, reducing medical worker exposure, alleviating the work pressure of medical staff, and speed up large quantity of sampling plan. The robot will first guide the subject into position with vocal commands, and automatically detect the optimum sampling location with a real-time machine learning algorithm. A dedicated control strategy aiming at minimizing discomfort and uniforming sample quantity is then applied to safely collect nucleic samples from the throat. Eventually, while the swab is being stored in the culture medium, a disinfection process is carried out simultaneously to prepare the robot for

A systematic review of collaborative robots for nurses: where are we now, and where is the evidence?

“…The studies in the included literature described various applications of cobots in healthcare settings. Of the 28 included articles, the most common applications were for service and logistical tasks comprising twenty-three articles majorly for aiding nurse’s work (e.g., Anthony et al, 2020 ; Oishi et al, 2021 ; Sun et al, 2022 ), and assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Prabhakar et al, 2020 ; Dangi et al, 2021 ; Virgolin et al, 2022 ), then social cobots (n = 8) with three overlaps wherein the cobot performs both services and social functions ( Boumans et al, 2018 ; Boumans et al, 2019 ; Miyake et al, 2020 ). The social cobots identified in the included articles were used to provide emotional support to patients especially children (e.g., Farrier et al, 2019 ; Ali et al, 2020 ; Rossi et al, 2022 ) and for providing information or taking clinical screening interviews ( Do et al, 2021 ; Yoo et al, 2021 ; see “Cobot application” columns in Table 3 ).…”

“…All social support cobots ( n = 6), and 75% of the elder care and/or memory support cobot ( n = 3) were near the patients. Cobots that are roaming freely in the healthcare facilities ( n = 13; Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ; Oishi et al, 2021 ) are majorly assisting nurses work ( n = 9) such as a cobotic cart ( Konara et al, 2020 ) for medication delivery, Carver-Cap cobot for logistics ( Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ), mobile personal robot 2 (PR2), and adaptive cobotic nursing assistant (ARNA) platform for fetching objects for nurses and measuring patients’ temperatures ( Dalal et al, 2018 ; Abubakar et al, 2020 ; Lundberg et al, 2022 ) to mention a few, while three studies did not report the location of the cobots ( He et al, 2019 ; Toney et al, 2022 ; Sun et al, 2023 ; see “Cobot location” columns in Table 3 ).…”

Automatic throat swab collection system

“…In this figure, the calibration plate is fixed at the end of the manipulator, where the M matrix is a 4×4 homogeneous matrix containing rotation matrix R and translation matrix T, 𝑀 is the transformation matrix from the base coordinate system of the manipulator to the camera coordinate system, 𝑀 is the transformation matrix from the base coordinate system of the manipulator to the end coordinate system of the manipulator, 𝑀 is the transformation matrix from the end coordinate system of the manipulator to the calibration plate coordinate system, and 𝑀 is the transformation matrix from the calibration plate coordinate system to the camera coordinate system. The camera takes pictures of the calibration plate fixed at the end of the manipulator, with each picture satisfying Equation (1). In this equation, 𝑀 is the unknown quantity to be solved, that is, the solution target;…”

“…This technique provides a convenient, rapid, and accurate means of identifying the specific type of virus. In order to achieve non-contact collection of pharyngeal swabs, a large number of studies have been carried out both domestically and internationally to replace the traditional manual collection with intelligent robots [1,2]. The research on the automatic throat swab collection system, utilizing a robotic arm as the actuator, primarily encompasses image capture and real-time target recognition through human-computer interaction terminal.…”

Autonomous Swab Robot for Naso- and Oropharyngeal COVID-19 Screening

“…This robot assists medical professionals in sample collection, improving efficiency and reducing the risk of infection. Moreover, autonomous approaches have been introduced for the Oropharyngeal-Swab Robot System 48,49 . These systems automate the swabbing process, minimizing human contact and reducing the risk of virus transmission while enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of sample collection.…”