Robots for Interventions: Proof-of-Concept Method for High-Speed Filling Line Interventions Towards the Removal of Gloves

Abstract

Abstract Purpose Although pharmaceutical high-speed filling lines are fully automated, interventions are still performed by hand via glove ports. Bringing robots into the high-speed production lines for the handling of interventions could increase both the thoughput and the sterility of the system. The work presented in this manuscript proposes a semi-autonomous intervention strategy for the removal of erroneous plungers. Methods A YOLOv8-based computer vision algorithm continuously monitors the state of the plunger feed. Autonomous motion planning is used for large, general movements, while human-operated teleoperation with system guidance allows for small, precise motions. The combination of both creates a intuitive, gloveless intervention method. Results A user test with a group of 22 volunteers shows that an untrained operator can perform the teleoperated intervention via this system in an average of $$\pm 30$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>30</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> s and $$\pm 21$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>21</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> s when the plungers are static and dynamic respectively. Via a Likert-scale based questionnaire, it was found that the test group experienced the haptic system as very intuitive. Additionally, the system is capable of running completely remotely via a two-laptop setup, which has been tested at distances up to 100km. Conclusion An intuitive, haptic semi-autonomous teleoperation system is created for the execution of a plunger removal intervention. Both in a static and dynamic scenario, an improvement of the operating time is observed compared to the current glove-based method (2 to 3 min). The system can run fully remotely and was found to be very intuitive by the user group.