We propose a new telerobotic system for untact swab sampling to prevent the infection of medical staff during upper respiratory sample collection. The system consists of a slave robot and two master devices. The slave robot is designed to move a swab in 6 degrees of freedom within the facial area and to insert and remove the swab under remote control by an operator at the master site based on magnified imaging of the patient’s facial area. The insertion and removal of the swab into and from the nostril are implemented by means of a swab insertion unit; as the counterpart to this unit, the master system also includes a swab insertion device to control the swab insertion unit remotely. A force sensor installed on the swab holder enables monitoring of the force generated when the swab touches the target. In experiments, a virtual specimen was installed on the posterior nasopharynx wall of a life-size head phantom model. The nasopharyngeal swab samplings of the phantom model were successfully performed thanks to the force monitoring capability of the proposed telerobotic system, showing that this system is suitable for remote upper respiratory sample collection.

This paper presents a new forward kinematic approach for the 3–6 Stewart platform. In the 3–6 Stewart platform, the position and orientation of the moving platform can be determined through kinematic constraint equations that indicate the possible trajectories of the three joints on the platform from the base coordinates. In most previous studies, the constraint equations were obtained through vector equations, which involve many complicated steps and multiple variables. Based on Denavit–Hartenberg (D-H) notation, the proposed approach allows a constraint equation representation with only four parameters. In addition, to implement the forward kinematics with the fewest possible D-H parameters, the 3–6 Stewart platform is reconfigured into three virtual revolute joints sharing base coordinates. Consequently, the constraint equations can be intuitively derived, and the computation process becomes more concise. The feasibility of the proposed approach is verified through an iterative numerical analysis and a simulation comparison with the general inverse kinematics.