IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021 - 84

first two months. Our robots have been helping provide
badly needed supportive care to patients isolated in ICUs.
The Design and Development Process
The main design requirements for the robot were simplicity
and high usability (i.e., easy operation) by health-care workers, with the capability to be operated, handled, and transported by a single person.
Moreover, the robot needed to be designed, develPudu is a social robot
oped, and built at a low
cost, in a development
specifically designed to
time frame of just a few
weeks. In addition, as it
provide communication
was not possible to have
advance access to either
and telepresence services
accurate maps of the hospitals where the robot
to COVID-19 patients.
would operate or accurate
location of patients' beds,
the alternative of having
autonomous operation was discarded, and it was decided to
design a robot that operates in an assistive teleoperation
mode [11] based on off-the-shelf devices.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. Pudu's first visit to the hospital. (a) Pudu entering an
elevator and (b) moving in a corridor.

Table 1. Pudu's technical specifications.

Height

1,300 mm

Footprint

Circular, with a diameter of 456 mm

Weight

10 Kg

Mobile platform

Kobuki [13]

Main processing unit

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 4 GB [14]

RGB-D camera

Intel RealSense D435i

Servocontroller

Arduino Nano

Servomotor

MG996R Servo Motor

Tablet

Samsung Galaxy Tab A10.1

Joystick

Xbox 360 Joystick

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

MARCH 2021

The design and development process implemented was
essential for having a final version of the robot ready to be used
in a hospital with all of the required permissions in just eight
weeks. This process consisted of the following four stages.
1) Stage 1-first design: The first version of the robot was the
result of addressing the first requirements of the health
team. This development process was carried out in our
fabrication laboratory, where it took four weeks. This
rapid design was possible only because of the experience
of the students' team in the RoboCup@Home competitions [12], where they acquired experience in designing
and building robots.
2) Stage 2-basic validation in the hospital: A first visit to the
hospital with the working prototype was carried out (see
Figure 2). During this visit, the way in which the robot
interacted with the hospital's infrastructure (corridors, lifts,
care rooms, beds, and so on) was analyzed. In addition, the
hospital's Department of Healthcare and Associated Infections (HAI) examined the robot and defined the requirements for its future operation in the hospital. We then took
it back to the laboratory, and a second version of the robot
was ready after one week.
3) Stage 3-first interaction with patients: A visit with the
second version of the robot was carried out. During this
visit, the robot was operated by a psychointensivist, and it
interacted with patients. The experience was very successful, as the psychointensivist and patients were satisfied and
pleased with the encounter, but two other requirements
arose: the need to control the tilt angle of the camera for
proper interaction with patients lying or sitting in different
positions and the need for microphones with noise cancellation to filter out the noise generated by equipment used
in ICUs. We again took the robot back to the laboratory,
and after two weeks, had our third prototype.
4) Stage 4-final validation: A final validation was carried out
on a third visit. During this visit, the robot was inspected,
and we received final approval from both the HAI department and the ethics committee to use the robot inside the
hospital. As a consequence of this visit, the hospital created and approved a formal protocol for the use of Pudu
with patients (see the " Deployment and Early Results " section). In addition, the visit was used to calibrate-based
on real interactions of the robot with health-care professionals and hospital furniture-the final position and tilt
angle of the red, green, blue, depth (RGB-D) camera,
which acquires the range data required for assistive teleoperation. After that, adjustments were made, and the final
version of the Pudu robot was ready to be used.
Pudu-A Social Robot for Patient
Communication and Telepresence
General Description: Hardware
and Software Components
Pudu is a social robot specifically designed to provide communication and telepresence services to COVID-19 patients.

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021

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