Service Robotics against COVID-2019 Pandemic

Dear Colleagues,

The field of service robotics has developed considerably in recent decades, including solutions in applications and utilities in medical fields and especially in support of surgical medical activities. Today more than ever, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the support of service robotics can result, in many cases, in well-appreciated and consistent help in the fight against the spread of the pandemic and, moreover, in the treatment of patients in very critical conditions due to COVID-19. However, the pandemic still requires considerable efforts from medical personnel and technical support in order to solve critical situations in intensive and sub-intensive care treatments as well as medical treatment in non-hospital and even residential living situations. Service robotics can contribute successfully to these challenges with innovative system solutions and easier procedures for both medical operators and patients. Therefore, in this Special Issue, the purpose of collecting papers focused on service robotics helping in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is intended to give visibility and stimulus to solutions and improvements of robotic service systems with performance suitable for the assistance and support operations of patients and medical operators.

Papers are welcomed in all major areas of R&D and innovation in service robotics helping to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and support treatments against it, including topics such as medical robots and devices, bio-inspired and cognitive robots, visual servicing of robot/human motion and status, human–robot and human–human interactions, cloud robotics for health care systems, and personal robots for patient care assistance. The solicited topics are related to new theories, advanced designs of robot mechanics and control architectures, and the development of intelligent robotic applications in helping in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• novel design and applications of robotic system;
• advanced robot control;
• human–robot interfaces;
• robot vision systems and visual servoing techniques;
• mobile robots, humanoid and walking robots;
• bio-inspired and swarm robotic systems;
• towards micro and nano-scale robots;
• personal robots for care assistance;
• medical robots and bionic prostheses;
• intelligent information technologies for cognitive robots;
• cognitive robots and emotional intelligence;
• cloud robotics;
• ethical, legal, and social issues of service robotics in medical treatment areas.

Videos can be published as links to the accepted papers.

Scientific steering committee

Prof. Dr. Chee-Kong Chui

Dr. Filippo Cavallo

Prof. Dr. Marco Franceschini

Prof. Dr. Bernardo Innocenti

Prof. Dr. Min Cheol Lee

Prof. Dr. Ken Masamune

Prof. Dr. Abhilash Pandya

Prof. Dr. Jong-Hyeon Park

Prof. Dr. Shahram Payandeh

Dr. Tarun Podder

Prof. Dr. Girijesh Prasad

Prof. Dr. Achim Schweikard

Prof. Dr. Kevin Warwick

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Carbone

Prof. Dr. Toshio Fukuda

Prof. Dr. Gursel Alici

Prof. Dr. Seokheun Choi

Prof. Dr. Min Cheol Lee

Prof. Dr. Ken Masamune

Prof. Dr. Giulio Rosati

Prof. Dr. Saïd Zeghloul

Prof. Dr. Dan Zhang

Contact the Guest editor or the journal staff for any query

Prof. Dr. Marco Ceccarelli
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Robotics is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.