Bio-inspired Soft (BIS) Hand for Tele-operated COVID-19 Oropharyngeal (OP) Swab Sampling

Abstract

The lasting difficulty imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has made profound challenges to our daily lives. The prominent task to contend with the COVID-19 is the diagnosis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The timely diagnosis guides further anti-infection measurements such as effective quarantine and dedicated therapy. Existing diagnosis majorly relies on manual face-to-face Oropharyngeal (OP) and Nasopharyngeal (NP) sampling, which results in high infection risk and heavy working burden to medical staff. Robotic sampling is a promising solution for this challenge because robots are intrinsically immune to viruses and working without fatigue. Following this target, we demonstrate our novel teleoperated OP swab sampling system with excellent safety guarantees, quick deployability, and task efficacy. A bio-inspired soft hand integrated with a soft wrist is developed, which can pick and manipulate the disposable swab as dexterous as a human hand. Stereo imaging is provided to the operator by a terminal binocular camera. The design, working mechanism, and control of our sampling system are discussed. Results show that our proposed robotic sampling system promises safe and effective OP swab sampling to protect medical staff and convenient the sampling process.