Drive Through Robotics: Robotic Automation for Last Mile Distribution of Food and Essentials During Pandemics

• Main Authors: Ajit Sharma, Philip Zanotti, Laxmi P. Musunur
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
• Series: IEEE Access
• Subjects: Robotics; artificial intelligence; machine vision; robots; automation; digital simulation
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9133423/

The COVID-19 pandemic unraveled the weak points in the global supply chain for goods. Specifically, people all over the world, including those in the most advanced nations have had to go without medical supplies and personal protective equipment. Scarcity of essentials increases anxiety and uncertainty exacerbating unproductive behaviors like hoarding and price gouging. Left to market forces, such unfair practices are likely to aggravate hardships and increase the loss of lives. Thus, there is a critical need to ensure safe distribution of food and essential supplies to all citizens to sustain them through challenging times. To this end, we propose a simple, affordable and contact-less robotic system for preparing and dispensing food and survival-kits at community scale. The system has provisions to prevent hoarding and price gouging. Design, simulation, and, validation of the system has been completed to ensure readiness for real world implementation. This project is part of an open-source program and detailed designs are available upon request to entities interested in using it to serve their communities.