Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 22, 2025
Efficient SARS-CoV-2 Quantitative Reverse Transcriptase PCR Saliva Diagnostic Strategy utilizing Open-Source Pipetting Robots
Published on: February 11, 2022
Design and Control of a Highly Redundant Rigid-flexible Coupling Robot to Assist the COVID-19 Oropharyngeal-Swab
Yingbai Hu1,2, Jian Li3, Yongquan Chen3,1
1Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society Shenzhen 518129 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.
