Abstract:The COVID-19 pandemic unraveled the weak points in the global supply chain for goods. Specifically, people all over the world, including those in the most advanced nations have had to go without medical supplies and personal protective equipment. Scarcity of essentials increases anxiety and uncertainty exacerbating unproductive behaviors like hoarding and price gouging. Left to market forces, such unfair practices are likely to aggravate hardships and increase the loss of lives. Thus, there is a critical need … Show more
“…Similarly, at the community level, a contactless robotic system is utilised to prepare and dispense food and survival-kits when needed ( Fig. 15 ) [ 109 ]. The proposed design is validated through simulation, to guarantee the feasibility of future implementations.…”
Section: Robots In Covid-19mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…14 Human-robot collaborative workstation [ 121 ] Fig. 15 Robotic work-cell for food distribution [ 109 ]. …”
Since the late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has been spread all around the world. The pandemic is a critical challenge to the health and safety of the general public, the medical staff and the medical systems worldwide. It has been globally proposed to utilise robots during the pandemic, to improve the treatment of patients and leverage the load of the medical system. However, there is still a lack of detailed and systematic review of the robotic research for the pandemic, from the technologies’ perspective. Thus a thorough literature survey is conducted in this research and more than 280 publications have been reviewed, with the focus on robotics during the pandemic. The main contribution of this literature survey is to answer two research questions, i.e. 1) what the main research contributions are to combat the pandemic from the robotic technologies’ perspective, and 2) what the promising supporting technologies are needed during and after the pandemic to help and guide future robotics research. The current achievements of robotic technologies are reviewed and discussed in different categories, followed by the identification of the representative work’s technology readiness level. The future research trends and essential technologies are then highlighted, including artificial intelligence, 5 G, big data, wireless sensor network, and human-robot collaboration.
“…Similarly, at the community level, a contactless robotic system is utilised to prepare and dispense food and survival-kits when needed ( Fig. 15 ) [ 109 ]. The proposed design is validated through simulation, to guarantee the feasibility of future implementations.…”
Section: Robots In Covid-19mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…14 Human-robot collaborative workstation [ 121 ] Fig. 15 Robotic work-cell for food distribution [ 109 ]. …”
Since the late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has been spread all around the world. The pandemic is a critical challenge to the health and safety of the general public, the medical staff and the medical systems worldwide. It has been globally proposed to utilise robots during the pandemic, to improve the treatment of patients and leverage the load of the medical system. However, there is still a lack of detailed and systematic review of the robotic research for the pandemic, from the technologies’ perspective. Thus a thorough literature survey is conducted in this research and more than 280 publications have been reviewed, with the focus on robotics during the pandemic. The main contribution of this literature survey is to answer two research questions, i.e. 1) what the main research contributions are to combat the pandemic from the robotic technologies’ perspective, and 2) what the promising supporting technologies are needed during and after the pandemic to help and guide future robotics research. The current achievements of robotic technologies are reviewed and discussed in different categories, followed by the identification of the representative work’s technology readiness level. The future research trends and essential technologies are then highlighted, including artificial intelligence, 5 G, big data, wireless sensor network, and human-robot collaboration.
“…Thus, it is important to ensure safe distribution of food and essential supplies to all citizens to sustain them through challenging times. Sharma et al (2020) have proposed a robotic drive through system, which can be used to achieve this objective. It is an affordable and contactless robotic system for organizing and dispensing food and survival kits at community scale.…”
Rapid growth of population, diminishing natural resources, climate change, shrinking agricultural lands and unstable markets are making the global food systems rather insecure. Therefore, modern agriculture and food systems should be more productive in terms of output, efficient in operation, resilient to climate change and sustainable for the future generations. As a result, the need of a technological transformation is greater than ever before. Being a recent advancement in computer sciences, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the capacity to address the challenges of this new paradigm. Hence, understanding the importance and applicability of AI in agriculture and food sector could be vital in the journey towards achieving global food security. This review focuses on the AI applications in relation to four pillars of food security (food availability, food accessibility, food utilization and stability) as defined by FAO, in detail. The AI technologies are being applied worldwide in all four pillars of food security even though it has been one of the slower adopted technologies compared to the rest. Nevertheless, it warrants exploring the capabilities of AI and their current impact on the food systems. It is eminent that AI technology has a key role to play in the future agriculture sector. The worldwide AI in agriculture market is expected to reach USD 2,075 million by 2024. Present article reveals how AI technologies could benefit global agriculture and food sector, and examines the ways by which AI can address the prominent issues in Sri Lankan agriculture sector such as labor scarcity, misuse of agrochemicals and inefficient food value chains. Though there are still many challenges and gaps to be addressed at research, policy, administrative and farmer levels, the immense potential of this novel technology should be exploited fast in the journey towards global food security.
“…The use of machine-learning chatbots for contactless COVID-19 screening and answering questions from the public are now part of healthcare and government agencies. Machine learning also helps researchers and experts evaluate vast quantities of data for forecasting COVID-19 distribution so that the potential pandemics can be detected as an early warning mechanism and endangered populations can be identified (Sharma et al 2020 ). The amount of knowledge on COVID-19 is exponentially rising in healthcare practitioners and researchers and making it impossible to obtain perspectives that inform treatment.…”
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