IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2021 - 88

automated guided vehicles for industrial logistics or collaborative
robots, but an effort is required for porting them to
every-day home environments. For other systems, like assistive
robots, although there is not yet an established market,
many solutions exist at the prototype level or an early production
stage, and it is necessary to enhance the maturity of
robotic solutions.
Despite the number of national and international initiatives,
our analysis showed that the impact that robotics
and intelligent machines could have had during the crisis
was also limited by three factors: 1) the state of the art
only allows for reliable and effective performance in limited,
controlled, and well-defined tasks; 2) these systems
often require assistance by technologically skilled people;
and 3) even existing technologies were not widely available
during the pandemic outbreak.
We believe that only a substantial further investment in
research and innovation can successfully tackle the first and
second issues (see [1]), fostering a UCD approach to citizen
robotics. For a response at the height of the pandemic outbreak,
I-RIM dedicated a special emergency effort, as
described in the next section. We would like to highlight that
this activity started to answer the needs of the Italian community
during the outbreak, but from the beginning, the database
has been compiled in both Italian and English to enable a
broader audience to benefit from it and hopefully foster novel,
interdisciplinary collaborations after the outbreak.
However, the solutions listed in the paper are considered
" stand alone, " while we point out the systemic approach
adopted by the Italian robotic community. This approach is
unique because it is a direct consequence of the well-established
links among different research groups in different
universities and the coordination of the national robotics
society (I-RIM).
Robots in Emergency and Open Coalition
A workshop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O
_yZH1JUAI8) was organized on 28 May 2020 by the Italian
Chapter of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
and I-RIM to reflect on the successes and shortcomings of
technology in the lockdown phase, and to prepare for the
next challenge-a safe economic recovery. The workshop
aimed at restarting a dialogue between industry and academia
based on the requests of the stakeholders. The
three main areas of interest were agriculture, manufacturing,
and health care. During the workshop, stakeholders
had the opportunity to express their needs, while academy
and industry proposed their solutions.
The difficulties of a robotic intervention of the appropriate
size in the extremely tight time frames of the emergency were
obviously enormous. This is not only a technology problem
(pilot projects prove that there exist technical solutions which,
albeit limited, could be useful), but also a logistical gap. There
were simply not enough robots yet on the market.
Nevertheless, the I-RIM community made an endeavor to
bring together all the forces that design and produce
advanced technologies, AI, and robotics in Italy; Europe; and
across the world; with the aim of making a useful, even if not
very ambitious or sophisticated, contribution. The idea was to
collect simple and well-documented robot projects, using offthe-shelf
hardware easily available during lockdown (e-commerce
never stopped delivering in Italy) and open software
made available free of charge by research centers. Most
importantly, these robot projects could be assembled and
operated by nonspecialized personnel to solve concrete problems
in the actual environment of our hospitals and elder care
homes in the suburbs. To make this possible, I-RIM launched
TechForCare, a common space or coalition (https://i-rim.it/
en/short-term-solutions), aimed at bringing together the
12
10
8
6
4
TRL 9
TRL 6 and 7
TRL 8
2
TRL 4 and 5
TRL 5 and 6
Figure 9. A histogram showing the relationship between the application field and the TRL of the pilot projects.
88 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * DECEMBER 2021
Number of Projects
Al Diagnosis
and Treatment
Disinfection
Technologies
Assistive
Robotics
Autonomous
Delivery
Companion
Robots
Telepresence
AgriRobotics
Labs in Cloud
Hospital
Manager
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_yZH1JUAI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_yZH1JUAI8 https://i-rim.it/en/short-term-solutions https://i-rim.it/en/short-term-solutions
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2021

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