Development of Tele-Operated Mobile Robots for COVID-19 Field Hospitals

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

“…The 28 selected articles were written by authors who either developed their own unique cobot platforms (n = 22), or authors who used off-the-shelf cobots, including Pepper ( n = 3), Nao ( n = 3), (see “Cobots used?” columns in Table 3 ). Six studies included came from similar authors/research teams, using the same or very similar cobotic platforms including two studies based in the United States ( Dalal et al, 2018 ; Lundberg et al, 2022 ), two based in Thailand ( Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ; Vongbunyong et al, 2021 ) and two based in the Netherlands ( Boumans et al, 2018 ; Boumans et al, 2019 - see rows in gray in Table 3 ). We decided to include these works from similar authors due to the fact that discovering commitment to continuous study is itself a finding from our review, and a table summarizing the overlap is presented within the Supplementary Material .…”

“…Any other type of cobot that the article did not specify the type, or is a novel cobot designed by the research authors, or even a third-party design that is not any of the aforementioned three is classified as a unique design ( n = 20). Examples of unique design cobots include “Lio”, a personal cobot assistant for routine tasks such as blood sample collection or mail delivery ( Mišeikis et al, 2020 ), “Carver-Cap” cobot cart for logistics ( Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ; Vongbunyong et al, 2021 ), adaptive cobotic nursing assistant (ARNA) platform for fetching objects for nurses and measuring patients’ temperatures ( Lundberg et al, 2022 ), “ISOLDE”, a multimodal interactive mobile cobot for thermal measurement, and delivery of medicine and other object essential items ( Virgolin et al, 2021 ), a social cobot used adapted for collecting patient-reported outcome measurement ( Boumans et al, 2018 ; 2019 ) to mention a few (see “Cobots used” columns in Table 3 ; Supplementary Figures S1 for pictures of other cobot products).…”

“…Beyond this, there were quite many studies that provided details about other cobot platforms such as “ISOLDE” ( Virgolin et al, 2021 ) and “PR2” ( Dala et al, 2018 ; Lundberg et al, 2022 ). The majority of the cobots were of “Unique design” ( n = 20) developed by the design team such as “Lio”, a personal cobot assistant with a mobile base and a rechargeable battery that disinfects and detects elevated body temperature remotely ( Mišeikis et al, 2020 ), “CARVER”, a cobotic cart with a mobile base and storage function used for medication delivery ( Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ; Vongbunyong et al, 2021 ), or an “active monitoring bedside agent” used to prevent falls for older adults ( Miyake et al, 2019 ; see “Cobot product used” columns in Table 3 ).…”

“…In terms of morphology, many cobots had relatively mechanistic designs ( n = 16) in which the designers did not try to create a humanlike or animal-like appearance (i.e., zoomorphic) and/or the design focused on utilitarian function instead of form but may choose to adopt a different appearance for future versions of the cobot. Some applications showed exposed electronics and wires which were likely due to the stage of the prototype and not the intention for the finalized product such as an autonomous mobile cobot (AMR) called “D-Bot” ( Guan et al, 2021 ), or a cobotic cart called “CARVER” ( Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020 ; Vongbunyong et al, 2021 ). The rest of the cobots in the included articles featured anthropomorphic designs ( n = 12) such as the humanoid cobot “Pepper” from United Group Robotics ( Boumans et al, 2018 ; Boumans et al, 2019 ), “NAO” and “MEDi” developed by Aldebaran from United Robotics Group ( Farrier et al, 2019 ; Ali et al, 2020 ; Rossi et al, 2022 ), “PR2” ( Dalal et al, 2018 ; Lundberg et al, 2022 ), or a multimodal interactive mobile cobot called “ISOLDE” ( Virgolin et al, 2021 ; see “Morphology” columns in Table 3 ).…”

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“…columns in Table 3). Six studies included came from similar authors/research teams, using the same or very similar cobotic platforms including two studies based in the United States (Dalal et al, 2018;Lundberg et al, 2022), two based in Thailand (Thamrongaphichartkul et al, 2020;Vongbunyong et al, 2021) and two based in the Netherlands (Boumans et al, 2018;Boumans et al, 2019 -see rows in gray in Table 3). We decided to include these works from similar authors due to the fact that discovering commitment to continuous study is itself a finding from our review, and a table summarizing the overlap is presented within the Supplementary Material.…”