ICRA 2021 Workshop on

No-Touch Care for Worker Safety During Pandemic Response

Workshop register is open now! Check out the updated schedule

Abstract:

The outbreak of COVID-19 has become a global pandemic affecting every continent except Antarctica. (Though, even Antarctica has strict quarantine requirements.) Many countries have seen recurrent peaks in cases and deaths, while a few countries have gained control after the initial peak. Yet, every country has seen what appears to be three distinct phases in worker impacts: the onset phase, the quarantine phase, and the recovery phase - all with lightly different requirements for worker protection. In response, robotics researchers around the world have driven new research and development into areas such as disinfection, medications and food delivery, and non-invasive diagnostics that are primarily aimed at different types of worker protections - but what are the explicit benefits of robotic movement?

This workshop looks specifically at the healthcare sector and various forms of worker assistance. The operation of medical robots in such areas are accomplished mainly through teleoperation or autonomous control. However, large scale applicability of these medical robots is challenging with respect to continuous operations, reliability, and risk for humans that justify the cost. Therefore, in this workshop, we aim to offer a forum to discuss the recent advances of healthcare robots for "no-touch care" during pandemics, as well as to discuss the opportunities and critical challenges in this field.

We welcome papers on covering novel and interdisciplinary developments in robotic response to Covid-19, field deployments, novel simulations and predictions of virus spread and transmission from the computer science, engineering, healthcare, and related perspectives. Our goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from the robotics and healthcare communities to explore what is possible and what is needed.