Design and Control of a Highly Redundant Rigid-flexible Coupling Robot to Assist the COVID-19 Oropharyngeal-Swab Sampling

Yingbai Hu; Jian Li; Yongquan Chen; Qiwen Wang; Chuliang Chi; Heng Zhang; Qing Gao; Yuanmin Lan; Zheng Li; Zonggao Mu; Zhenglong Sun; Alois Knoll

doi:10.1109/LRA.2021.3062336

Design and Control of a Highly Redundant Rigid-flexible Coupling Robot to Assist the COVID-19 Oropharyngeal-Swab Sampling

IEEE Robot Autom Lett. 2021 Feb 25;7(2):1856-1863. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2021.3062336. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Authors

Yingbai Hu^{1

2}, Jian Li³, Yongquan Chen^{3

1}, Qiwen Wang^{3

1}, Chuliang Chi^{3

1}, Heng Zhang^{3

1}, Qing Gao^{3

1}, Yuanmin Lan^{1

4}, Zheng Li^{1

5}, Zonggao Mu^{1

6}, Zhenglong Sun^{3

1}, Alois Knoll²

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society Shenzhen 518129 China.
² Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time SystemsTechnische Universität München 85748 München Germany.
³ Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing & School of Science and EngineeringThe Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen 518172 China.
⁴ Longgang District People's Hospital, Shenzhen 518172 China.
⁵ Department of surgery, and Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative MedicineThe Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China.
⁶ School of Mechanical EngineeringShandong University of Technology Zibo 255000 China.

Abstract

The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) has caused mortality and morbidity worldwide. Oropharyngeal-swab (OP-swab) sampling is widely used for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in the world. To avoid the clinical staff from being affected by the virus, we developed a 9-degree-of-freedom (DOF) rigid-flexible coupling (RFC) robot to assist the COVID-19 OP-swab sampling. This robot is composed of a visual system, UR5 robot arm, micro-pneumatic actuator and force-sensing system. The robot is expected to reduce risk and free up the clinical staff from the long-term repetitive sampling work. Compared with a rigid sampling robot, the developed force-sensing RFC robot can facilitate OP-swab sampling procedures in a safer and softer way. In addition, a varying-parameter zeroing neural network-based optimization method is also proposed for motion planning of the 9-DOF redundant manipulator. The developed robot system is validated by OP-swab sampling on both oral cavity phantoms and volunteers.

Keywords: Deep learning for visual perception; medical robots and systems; redundant robots; task and motion planning.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, in part by the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, in part by the Shenzhen Fundamental Research under Grants JCYJ20180508162406177, JCYJ20190806142818365 and JCYJ20210324115604012, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants U1613216, 62006204, and 61903100 from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.