Robots Against

Robots Against Infectious Diseases

Infectious Diseases
Kory Kraft

Abstract— Robots can play an integral role in the fight

against infectious diseases. Robots, unlike humans, cannot catch
infectious diseases; unlike vaccines, they are agnostic to specific
infectious agents; unlike antibiotics, they do not contribute
to medically-resistant strains. Despite these benefits, there
remain enormous technical, cultural, and social-psychological
challenges to successfully deploy robots in the fight against
infectious disease outbreaks.
I propose three research questions that will help overcome
these hurdles. These questions are informed by my previous
work in the space and the relevant literature. Four studies are
outlined to answer these questions: an observational study in
the field to ascertain current practices as well as environmental
and cultural constraints, an extension to previous work to Fig. 1: Teleoperated robot removes linen from a cot in a
understand if the effect found therein is cross-cultural, a simulated Ebola treatment unit.
longitudinal user-study on the teleoperation interface, and an
examination of physical visibility proxies for use during robot-
mediated health care.
II. R ESEARCH Q UESTIONS
The following research questions need to be addressed
I. M OTIVATION
to effectively deploy robots in infectious diseases outbreaks.
From broad to specific they are:
Infectious diseases present a perennial threat to peoples
across the world. Vaccines and antibiotics seem like silver • Q1: What tasks can and should robots do to help in

bullets for highly communicable, highly virulent diseases. future infectious disease outbreaks?
However, these tools take time, money, and political expedi- • Q2: How would proposed teleoperated-surrogate solu-

ency to develop and distribute, and can still be highly disease
specific [1]. For example, despite knowledge of the Ebola
Virus Disease (EVD) since 1976, the most promising vaccine
trials only began after heightened international fear of the
recent outbreak [2].
To be effective, each vaccine must be tailored to each
virus, and sometimes each viral strain. Robots are not a
replacement for vaccines and traditional methods for treating,
containing, and preventing infectious diseases. They are,
however, general platforms that can work in a wide variety
of infectious agent outbreaks, until appropriate vaccines or
antibiotics are developed.
Teleoperated and autonomous robots can be used by per-
sonnel to perform general, supportive health care tasks during
outbreaks. This will reduce the time staff needs to spend
in dangerous contamination zones. This will also reduce
the time wearing inhibitive personal protective equipment.
Health care staff will be enabled to direct their attention and
effort at the hardest parts of medical care. In the end, patients
will receive more responsive individual care while ensuring
health care staff safety.
Kory Kraft
Robotics Program, School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331
kraftko@oregonstate.edu
tions affect the interactions between:
– a) robots and patients?
– b) robots and health care providers?
– c) health care providers and patients?
• Q3: How effective are physical visibility proxies for
enabling higher levels of comfort and trust between
health care providers and patients when a teleoperated
robot is involved?
The steps for answering each of these questions, as shaped
by the work in Section III, are outlined in Section IV.
III. BACKGROUND AND R ELATED W ORK
Robots are currently in use in the medical industry. For
example, the da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Sur-
gical has been on the market since 1999 [3]. The stationary
robot system is teleoperated by a surgeon in the same room.
Aethon Inc’s TUG robot is used to transport and deliver items
in hospitals [4]. Xenex sells a UV disinfection robot [5].
Social robots like the Paro and MEDi (built on the NAO
robot) are being used in health care settings to calm and
comfort patients [6].
Infectious disease outbreaks that occur in resource con-
strained environments, like the recent Ebola outbreak, present
very different settings and considerations than those often
discussed in the medical robot literature. Surprisingly there
is little intersection of the medical robotics literature with the

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disaster robotics literature, aside from things like examining
how to use robots to provide limited remote care to patients
in disaster search and rescue scenarios [7]. Thus, the specific
benefits and challenges of deploying robots in situations of
infectious disease outbreaks have been overlooked.
My work makes progress on this. The most recent study
manipulated patients’ visibility of the teleoperator while a
teleoperated, human-sized robot performed general health-
care tasks around participants. The results suggest that people
are more trusting of the operator and more comfortable
overall when they can see the operator of the robot [8]. The
results are interesting, but future work needs see if this is a
cross-cultural effect, since outbreaks can happen in a variety
of cultures. Further investigation is also needed to determine
if the benefits of full physical visibility can be overcome
through proxies (e.g. a streaming view of operator on robot’s
”face” and operator’s speech via speaker).
IV. A PPROACH AND M ETHODOLOGY
A. Q1 - Field Research Study
Q1 grounds my research questions reality. Proper HRI
must be studied with imagination and with an appreciation
of the complexities of real life, real people, and real robots.
My work thus far has been informed by informal and formal
conversations with health care providers at workshops and
lectures, reviewing the appropriate literature, and conducting
experiments in our simulated treatment unit. I propose to
take this further by spending 2 weeks at the Medicins
Sans Frontiers training headquarters in Brussels, Belgium to
personally undergo portions of the outbreak response training
regimen, interview staff training members, and reviewing
the high level process. Following this, I will go to a de-
ployed Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone to observe
and interview the involved local populations. Seeing and
hearing the particular challenges and available resources of
the organizations currently fighting infectious disease will
yield better evaluation metrics for future proposed robotic
solutions. This will guide future work towards proposing
viable, needed solutions.
B. Q2 - Interactions Studies
To answer Q2, first my previous study will be restructured
and deployed virtually on Amazon Mechanical Turk [8].
Participants will be prompted similarly as those in the
previous study, watch a video (two different videos will be
available depending on the condition), and respond to the
survey questions. This study will allow more cultures to be
reached and give insight regarding the cultural component
(if any) of the effect. Granted, this will come at the cost
of being able to collect physiological responses and situate
people in the simulated environment with a real robot.
I will conduct a longitudinal 2 x 2 within-subject user
study to examine how the proposed teleoperated-surrogate
solution affects the interactions between robots and health
care providers. Interface (shared-autonomy vs. teleoperated)
and visibility (full vs no visibility) will be varied within-
subjects. As time progresses, the tasks will increase in
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difficulty. Near the end of the study, I will take the role of
a patient. Metrics will be used to evaluate the ability of the
participants to complete the tasks, the frustration levels of the
participants during the training sessions, and the participants
level of empathy with simulated patients. Participants will
be current health care students.
C. Q3 - Physical Visibility Proxies Study
Q3 is motivated by my previous study. The results in-
dicated that the visibility of the operators to the patients
impacted their trust and comfort levels of the operators.
Work needs to be done to see if this can be overcome
through proxies for physical visibility. The new study will
analyse and evaluate responses to the proposed proxies, such
as adding in views of the operator on the robot’s face,
on a television in the room, or allowing two-way speech
communication between the patient and operator. This study
will follow a between-subjects design, varied by different
visual proxies.
V. C ONCLUSION
The most recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa reminds us
that disease is still present and disproportionately affecting
the resource-constrained areas of the world. More work needs
to be done to understand the specifics of what constitutes fea-
sibility in these situations, and then to leverage the benefits of
robotics in this space. The research questions above expose
some of these challenges for deployment. The approaches
outlined for each of the presented studies give direction to
exploring these problems in hopes of overcoming them.
The findings from each study have the potential to improve
the response to future outbreaks. Furthermore, the entire field
of telepresence medicine will benefit from understanding and
overcoming the physical visibility deficiencies of patient trust
and comfort.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project was funded by the National Science Founda-
tion under award IIS 1518652 and IIS 1540483.
R EFERENCES
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[3] “Intuitive surgical,” 2015, http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/.
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[5] “Xenex disinfection services,” 2015, https://www.xenex.com/.
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