Robot-Human Collaboration for Improving Patient Care in Infectious Disease Environments

Abstract

In an outbreak of an infectious disease, such as Ebola, care staff face many challenges. They are in danger of exposure, they are frequently overwhelmed, and often cannot provide a satisfactory level of care. We propose introducing robots to aid in the treatment of infectious disease, in order to raise the quality of care and protect staff from potential exposure. We will investigate how to allocate tasks among human and robotic agents, and incorporate human factors in the task allocation planner, beginning with the optimization of cognitive load.