IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2021 - 87

new projects can be added by developers autonomously and
are validated by the I-RIM staff.
Figure 7 provides some examples of projects extracted
from the database. One can immediately notice the variety of
the systems shown, which is directly related to the number of
applications that roboticists and practitioners have envisioned
for fighting COVID-19.
To provide a quantitative evaluation of the distribution
of new robotic technologies, Figure 8 reports simple statistics
of the collected data. Our analysis includes projects
collected from all over the world to obtain the most comprehensive
set of technological demonstrators. The geographical
distribution highlights a relevant number of
Italian initiatives, which is related to the specific interest of
the I-RIM community.
Within our search, we identified nine different application
fields for robotic technologies. It is worth noting that the use
of robotic technologies in the medical field and for environmental
sanitation, which includes devices for monitoring
people's health (29%); disinfection technologies (16.7%); and
assistive robotics (15.3%); covers more than 60% of the applications
retrieved. It is possible to identify that a second cluster
of applications refers to those systems that prevent the physical
contact among people during the pandemic outbreak,
such as autonomous delivery (13.9%), companion robots
(6.9%), and telepresence systems (6.9%).
Given the relatively high TRL of the demonstrators, 87.5%
of the projects are above TRL6, most of the projects in the
Geographical Region
18.1
30.6
25
26.4
North America
Europe
Italy
Asia
4.2
6.9
29.2
6.9
13.9
16.7
15.3
Developer
11.1
25
Company
Research
75
19.4
16.7
51.4
TRL
1.4
9 - On the Market
8 - System Ready
6 and 7 - Tested Out of the Lab
5 and 6 - Tested in the Lab
database involve companies and start-ups (75%), while only a
few have been fully developed by research institutes (25%).
Studying the relationship among the data collected, it is
worth noting that most of the fields have demonstrators at
various TRLs, except for the telepresence systems and smart
hospital managers, which already had a market as videoconference
and management tools, respectively (Figure 9). AI for
diagnosis and treatment is the most developed field, perhaps
because it does not necessarily rely on advanced hardware
platforms. Assistive, companion, and agricultural robotics
are at the forefront of research and innovation, with most of
the results having a TRL ≤8, which identifies those systems
that are functionally complete and operational but are not yet
in large-scale production.
The pandemic outbreak resulted in the need for robots
and intelligent machines to respond to new social rules, like
physical distancing; intensive object and environment disinfection;
physiological data acquisition for monitoring and
tracking the infections; and practical issues, such as the scalability
of swab-test analysis (see the " Collection of Needs " section).
Another important aspect is that the robots need to be
deployed in hospitals, shops, and in everyday life contexts,
which differ from their traditional application fields, e.g.,
industrial production lines and logistics.
From our analysis emerged that the technologies related to
sensing, monitoring, computation, and data management are
the most ready on the market. Some robotic technologies
exist to answer the needs of autonomous delivery, e.g.,
Application Field
4.2 2.8
Al for Diagnosis and Treatment
Disinfection Technologies
Assistive Robotics
Autonomous Delivery
Companion Robots
Telepresence
Agricultural Robotics
Labs in Cloud
Smart Hospital Manager
Figure 8. The percentage distribution of the pilot projects by geographical region, application field, developer, and TRL.
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