IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021 - 16

FROM THE GUEST EDITORS

Robotics Responds to the
COVID-19 Outbreak
By Lino Marques, Robin Murphy, Kaspar Althoefer, Satoshi Tadokoro, and Cecilia Laschi

T

he coronavirus pandemic has
quickly become the most dra-
matic and disruptive event
experienced by our current
generation. The disease has spread very
quickly around the world. The growing
numbers of new infections and patients
in need of intensive medical care have
pushed clinical services beyond their
limits, revealing a shortage of trained
personnel and lifesaving equipment,
such as ventilators. In addition, frontline
health professionals operating in highly
contagious areas expose themselves to
the risk of infection. The most common
political response to mitigate the spread
of the disease has been to promote
social distancing and locking down
entire countries. Although effective,
these measures impose heavy social and
economic consequences.
Robotics progress has had an impact
on the coronavirus pandemic, and, in
turn, the pandemic has led to progress
in robotics. The international robotics
community engaged in this emergency
at its very start and offered support with
existing robotics technologies as well as
by developing new devices and systems
within short time frames. An analysis of
how robotics can contribute to manag-
ing pandemics was proposed early on in
the robotics community [1] The possi-
bilities of using robots to replace
humans and for remote operation in
risky environments and tasks, as well as
in proxying social interaction, have
gained interest and value for potential
help during the pandemic. Robotics and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2020.3048866
Date of current version: 22 March 2021

16

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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automation technologies are already
playing a critical role in this crisis: while
testing and life support equipment are
usually automated, in the past months,
we have seen human creativity emerge
in the fight against this pandemic
through the use of robots in applications
never seen before, such as protecting
people by disinfecting risky environ-
ments, detecting the disease, monitoring
social distancing, providing remote care,
promoting social interaction for con-
fined patients, supporting remote work,
and delivering medical supplies to hos-
pitals and goods to persons at home or
in hard to reach places, and so forth.
These applications, which typically
involve the deployment of robots in nor-
mal living environments, their operation
by unskilled personnel, and the interac-
tion with the general population, impose
significant research challenges that need
to be addressed and overcome. Addi-
tionally, the use of robots for the regulat-
ed fields of health care and for public
safety, as well as for interaction with
common citizens, raises ethical, safety,
and reliability concerns that also need to
be carefully considered.
This special issue of IEEE Robotics
and Automation Magazine, edited by
the IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society Special Interest Group on
Humanitarian Technologies (SIGHT),
aims to present up-to-date results and
innovative advanced solutions on the
use of robotics and automation technol-
ogies to fight the outbreak, giving par-
ticular emphasis to works involving the
actual deployment of robots combined
with meaningful analysis and lessons
learned for the robotics community. It

MARCH 2021

collects nine articles that span reviews
of current cases of robot applications in
pandemics, specific cases of existing
robots being deployed in COVID-19-
related scenarios, and even cases
involving the fast design and develop-
ment of robotic devices to respond to
this emergency.
The review article by Di Lallo et al.
reports lessons learned and challenges
faced by medical robotics in the context
of the pandemic. It provides an exten-
sive survey of medical robots used in
different tasks, along with scenarios of
prevention, screening, diagnosis, treat-
ment, and home care. As a contribution
to the robotics community, this article
outlines unmet needs and open chal-
lenges to ensure preparedness to com-
bat infectious diseases.
Covering a more specific area, the
review by Courtney and Royall reports
on the use of robotics in laboratories,
addressing the whole workflow, from
automated sampling acquisition and
processing to the use of robots in the
development of new medicines and
vaccines. More broadly, Jovanovic et al.
report on the first 10 projects, out of 146
proposals, funded by the European
HERO Digital Innovation Hub on
health-care robotics. These are industri-
al projects across Europe aiming to have
a clinical impact within a two-month
time frame.
Several of the articles report the use
of mobile robots in the pandemic, both
outdoors, for logistic tasks, and indoors,
for disinfection, logistics, and telepres-
ence for patients and health-care work-
ers. Liu et al. describe the hardware and
software architecture employed by the
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021
