Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic unraveled the weak points in the global supply chain for goods. Specifically, people all over the world, including those in the most advanced nations have had to go without medical supplies and personal protective equipment. Scarcity of essentials increases anxiety and uncertainty exacerbating unproductive behaviors like hoarding and price gouging. Left to market forces, such unfair practices are likely to aggravate hardships and increase the loss of lives. Thus, there is a critical need to ensure safe distribution of food and essential supplies to all citizens to sustain them through challenging times. To this end, we propose a simple, affordable and contact-less robotic system for preparing and dispensing food and survival-kits at community scale. The system has provisions to prevent hoarding and price gouging. Design, simulation, and, validation of the system has been completed to ensure readiness for real world implementation. This project is part of an open-source program and detailed designs are available upon request to entities interested in using it to serve their communities.
Highlights
A critical aspect of responding to large scale medical emergencies like pandemics is a well functioning supply chain
We propose a ’Robotic Drive Through System’ (RDS) for distributing essentials in a fair and equitable manner
We evaluate and select the other non-robotic automation components of the work-cell, including the robotic end-of-arm gripper, conveyance mechanisms, order dispense mechanism and the order-box
Summary
A critical aspect of responding to large scale medical emergencies like pandemics is a well functioning supply chain. Due to quarantine restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, food acquisition of prepared meals reduced significantly, shifting the demand to grocery stores This prompted the Government to classify groceries as an essential service and declare new guidelines which allow grocery workers to continue working even after exposure to COVID-19, as long as they remain asymptomatic [9]. Such policies are likely to further increase the risk of exposure during grocery store visits. This can add an additional $20 to the order cost Because of these challenges during pandemics, it becomes imperative to have last mile fulfillment models that do not rely upon in-store customer visits or human employees.
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