Nowadays, most disinfection robots have a bulky design or large dimensions, making it harder for them to operate in small, tight and narrow spaces from the medical environment and other facilities. The solution for disinfecting the hard-to-reach areas is to use disinfection robots with folding mechanism. They can operate in different configurations, making it easier for them to access the areas where the space is limited. More specifically, their folded position (minimum position) can be used to disinfect the area under the hospital beds, which is known to be a reservoir of infectious agents, while their extended position (maximum position) can be used for the general disinfection. The paper presents the characteristics of the currently available disinfection robots and how using robots with folding mechanism would overcome their limitations and improve the overall quality and efficiency of the disinfection process.

The five-bar linkage, used in the form of a planar manipulator, benefits from easy controllability and relatively simple kinematic structures, which mean that it can be used in several applications in robotics, rehabilitation, and haptic devices, etc. This paper proposes an optimal synthesis method for a symmetrical five-bar linkage of type 5-RRRRR, with a singularity-free dexterous workspace, based on workspaces with predefined shapes, like squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, and ellipses. The synthesis conditions, to avoid singularities, are given as inequations, which can be further substituted with a system of equations, by introducing the supraunitary coefficient, k. The analytical solutions of the resulting system of equations enable the computation of the link lengths of the five-bar linkage. The optimization method provides the optimal value of the supraunitary coefficient, in order to obtain a maximum value for the minimum input transmission angle and a minimum value for the manipulator size. In this paper, the authors present an analytical approach to the optimal synthesis of a symmetrical five-bar linkage for different shapes of workspace, with the same surface and coordinates in terms of the mass center, as well as the resulting link lengths. In regard to the numerical examples, the authors considered and compared performance indices, such as manipulability, the condition number, and stiffness. The considered examples showed that an equilateral triangle-shaped workspace achieved higher global manipulability, a square-shaped workspace achieved higher global dexterity and the minimum input transmission angle, and circular workspaces achieved the highest mean stiffness and total surface size. It was observed that the synthesis method generates structures that are well-suited to singularity-free dexterous workspaces, with nonzero stiffness values.

Current disinfection robots either have a bulky design or cannot operate in multiple configurations, therefore being unable to disinfect the hard-to-reach areas, which leads to low efficiency of the disinfection process. A solution for this problem would be to use disinfection robots with folding mechanisms which can operate in different configurations based on the area type that needs to be disinfected. This paper presents the feasibility study of the 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage used for a disinfection robot with folding mechanism. First, the structure’s parameters were computed with a synthesis method by developing the inequalities system in order to avoid the singularities positions of the mechanism. This initial method took into consideration different values of the design coefficient p (which indicates the two possible designs of the selected linkage) and an arbitrary value of the coefficient k > 1, which was imposed in order to substitute the resulting inequalities system with an equation system. However, applying this method does not ensure that the optimal 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage structure for the design of a medical disinfection robot is obtained. Furthermore, an optimized synthesis method was applied, which took into consideration the ratio between the total height of the mechanism and its total size. The parameters of the seven-bar linkage were computed for multiple values of the design coefficient p ∈ [1.1; 2] and multiple values of the coefficient k ∈ (0; 2], while a target function was implemented in order to identify the mechanism with the highest height range and the lowest size, which is considered to be the optimal structure for the design of a medical disinfection robot with a folding mechanism. The accuracy and the reliability of the results are furthermore strengthened by a performance analysis between the optimal indicated structure from the optimized synthesis method and other 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage structures, which were computed with different values of the parameters.

This study aims to provide a set of experimentally determined forces needed for gripping operations related to a robotically manipulated microliter manual pipette. The experiments are conducted within the scope of automated sample processing for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis in small-sized to medium-sized laboratories where dedicated automated equipment is absent and where procedures are carried out manually. Automation is justified by the requirement for increased efficiency and to eliminate possible errors generated by lab technicians. The test system comprises an industrial robot; a dedicated custom gripper assembly necessary for the pipette; pipetting tips; and mechanical holders for tubes with chemical substances and genetic material. The selected approach is to measure forces using the robot’s built-in force–torque sensor while controlling and limiting the pipette’s gripping force and the robot’s pushing force. Because the manipulation of different materials requires the attachment and discarding of tips to and from the pipette, the operator’s perceived tip release force is also considered.