RPI robots to build overflow structures for healthcare facilities
Marie Donlon | December 16, 2020As part of its Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, researchers from New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are designing, building and programming a series of robots to help in the manufacture of self-erecting structures to be deployed at healthcare facilities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In conjunction with Pvillion — a Brooklyn-based manufacturer of self-erecting, solar-powered structures for physically overburdened healthcare facilities — RPI will help to expedite the manufacture of these structures for critical care, quarantine, infection control or overflow capacity to handle COVID-19-related surges using the human-directed robots.
According to RPI, the robots will be capable of various joining and manipulating tasks, including holding, rotating and pulling the waterproof fabric components of the structures taut to enable heat sealing and sewing during manufacture.
With funding from the Department of Defense, the program aims to expedite the manufacture of such structures as COVID-19-related hospitalizations experience a surge.
“This project answers a timely challenge in both manufacturing and health care,” explained Glenn Saunders, a senior research engineer at the Center for Automation Technologies and Systems at RPI. “These robots are needed to fill a real void in manufacturing that’s currently present. They will enable faster production of a structure that could give medical teams the extra space they need to respond to a pandemic like the one we’re currently experiencing.”