CDC https://www.cdc.gov awarded $1.5 million over 3 years to the University of Illinois at Chicago https://uic.edu and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) https://www.wpi.edu for projects aimed at reducing workers’ exposures to hazards through the development and use of robots or co-robots.
CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health https://www.cdc.gov/niosh (NIOSH) has partnered with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund studies on how to use co-robots in the workplace.
This research will be conducted through NSF’s National Robotics Initiative 2.0. which supports research in the U.S to accelerate the development and use of co-robots to complement but not replace human workers. Co-robots work alongside people or other robots in order to help improve worker safety.
As for healthcare, remote controlled nursing robots have the potential to reduce workload and the risk of infections especially in quarantine and intensive care environments. Researchers at WPI will develop a more intuitive interface to make it easier for nurses to operate robots from a distance Researchers are going to investigate best practices for integrating robots into current nursing education.
Also, NIOSH’s Center for Occupational Robotics Research is working across industrial sectors to guide the development and use of occupational robots to enhance workers’ safety, health, and well-being.
The Center is studying traditional industrial robots that work in robotic cells and cages away from human workers as well as studying emerging robotic technologies such as co-robots, wearable robotics, remotely controlled autonomous vehicles and drones, and how future robots will be capable to use advanced artificial intelligence.