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EMAR Mini - Emergency Assistance Robot

Adam Milton-Barker

Adam Milton-Barker

Bangor, Wales

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  • 0 Collaborators

EMAR Mini is a minature version of EMAR, an open-source Emergency Robot Assistant to assist doctors, nurses and hospital staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, and similar situations we may face in the future. ...learn more

Project status: Under Development

Robotics, RealSense™, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence

Groups
Hacker Lab IoT, Student Developers for AI, DeepLearning, Artificial Intelligence Europe, Movidius™ Neural Compute Group, Internet of Things

Intel Technologies
Movidius NCS, OpenVINO

Code Samples [1]Links [1]

Overview / Usage

EMAR Mini is a minature version of EMAR, an open-source Emergency Robot Assistant to assist doctors, nurses and hospital staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, and similar situations we may face in the future.

EMAR Mini will be our official demonstration robot as it is smaller and more portable, though has obvious restrictions compared to EMAR.

The robotics team working on EMAR & EMAR Mini are:

This project is a work in progress, however our plan is to work with a local medical/health center or hospital to do a pilot project with EMAR (Large).

Methodology / Approach

The idea for this open-source tele-operated robot came as I was sat in room in a hospital surrounded by people with COVID-19 as a potential COVID-19 Pneumonia patient. The doctors, nurses and other teams were in among us for the whole 12 hours or more I was in the hospital.

Some of the common things I saw was nurses & doctors calling patients, giving paracetamol, taking temperatures, adjusting masks and blankets. Every time one of the medical staff had to do one of these tasks they were putting themselves in danger of catching COVID-19.

Each of these tasks can be carried out by tele-operated robots, so this is where the idea came from.

Technologies Used

Key Features

Below are the features that will be available in the completed

  • HIAS Network Device: EMAR is a device on the HIAS network, allowing machine to machine/machine to application communication.
  • HIAS UI Plugin: Integration with the HIAS UI.
  • 3D printed: EMAR's shell is 3D printed.
  • Tele-Operated: Remotely operated using the HIAS UI, voice control & remote control.
  • Real-Time Depth Sensing: Uses Intel® RealSense™ D415 camera and streams depth frames to a local server, used by HIAS to allow users to see realtime stream of depth sensors.
  • Real-Time Camera Stream: Uses Intel® RealSense™ D415 camera and streams camera frames to a local server.
  • Object Detection: Uses Intel Neural Computer Stick 2 to provide object recognition on the Realsense D415 camera stream.
  • Remote Control: Uses ELEGOO Uno R3 kit with their IR Receiver Module and Remote Control to provide easy remote control of EMAR Mini.
  • Real-Time 2 Way Audio Communication: Audio is sent from HIAS and other applications to EMAR Mini and vice versa. This feature is to provide medical teams the ability to communicate with patients in real-time whilst seeing them via the real-time camera stream.
  • Thermal Sensing: A thermal camera is used to take patient's temperatures safely.
V1 Available Features

As mentioned the project is a work in progress. Below you will find the currently available features.

  • V1 of the 3D printed files are now available.
  • V1 of the HIAS EMAR/EMAR Mini UI is now available in the HIAS server project. This system allows tele-operation of EMAR Mini and viewing the real-time streams.
  • HIAS tele-operation for the following:
    • Panning the head.
    • Moving the two arm pieces.
  • Real-time depth sensing and stream.
  • Real-time camera stream, object detection and object distance measurements.

Repository

https://github.com/COVID-19-AI-Research-Project/EMAR-Mini

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