Abstract
Healthcare workers face a high risk of contagion during a pandemic due to their close proximity to patients. The situation is further exacerbated in the case of a shortage of personal protective equipment that can increase the risk of exposure for the healthcare workers and even non-pandemic related patients, such as those on dialysis. In this study, we propose an emergency, non-invasive remote monitoring and control response system to retrofit dialysis machines with robotic manipulators for safely supporting the treatment of patients with acute kidney disease. Specifically, as a proof-of-concept, we mock-up the touchscreen instrument control panel of a dialysis machine and live-stream it to a remote user’s tablet computer device. Then, the user performs touch-based interactions on the tablet device to send commands to the robot to manipulate the instrument controls on the touchscreen of the dialysis machine. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, we conduct an accuracy test. Moreover, we perform qualitative user studies using two modes of interaction with the designed system to measure the user task load and system usability and to obtain user feedback. The two modes of interaction included a touch-based interaction using a tablet device and a click-based interaction using a computer. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in the relatively low task load experienced by the users for both modes of interaction. Moreover, the system usability survey results reveal no statistically significant difference in the user experience for both modes of interaction except that users experienced a more consistent performance with the click-based interaction vs. the touch-based interaction. Based on the user feedback, we suggest an improvement to the proposed system and illustrate an implementation that corrects the distorted perception of the instrumentation control panel live-stream for a better and consistent user experience.
Highlights
Last few decades have witnessed widespread adoption of robotic solutions by several industries for operations that are considered difficult or dangerous for humans to perform (Trevelyan et al, 2008)
With telerobotics and human-robot interaction (HRI) being used for myriad applications, we propose to use these approaches in a healthcare setting and show that telerobotics and intuitive HRI can obviate the need for patients and healthcare workers to be exposed to high-risk interactions during a pandemic
We proposed a system for remote control of a dialysis machine with mobile HRI as part of COVID-19 emergency response
Summary
Last few decades have witnessed widespread adoption of robotic solutions by several industries for operations that are considered difficult or dangerous for humans to perform (Trevelyan et al, 2008). For example, heavy-duty industrial manipulators form an integral part of the assembly line (Hägele et al, 2016) and one would be hard-pressed to find an automotive manufacturing facility that does not employ some sort of robotic assistance. Robots are actively being developed, examined, and used for inspection, decontamination, and Mobile HRI for Dialysis Machine decommissioning of nuclear plants (Nagatani et al, 2013; Krotkov et al, 2017); search and rescue operations following natural, industrial, and man-made disasters (Murphy et al, 2008); and exploration in outer space (Yoshida and Wilcox, 2008). Several advancements have been made to render the HRI as seamless as it can be
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