Mental and Emotional Health Care for COVID-19 Patients: Employing Pudu, a Telepresence Robot

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the mental and emotional health of patients, family members, health-care workers, and the community. Patients are affected by symptoms produced by prolonged hospitalization and isolation, and health-care workers are affected by the stress produced by the possibility of infection and rapid changes in the kinds of care they provide. Robotics technologies can contribute to addressing these stresses. This article describes the development and main characteristics of Pudu, a telepresence robot designed to provide safe communication between COVID-19 patients and health-care workers, particularly neurologists and intensive care psychologists. The article identifies the key aspects that enabled the development and deployment of the robot in just eight weeks during an intensive quarantine and describes how the robot is assisting health-care workers in providing mental and psychological health care. At present, two Pudu robots are in use in two Chilean hospitals. Although the city of Santiago is moving toward less-intensive levels of quarantine, our robots are still needed to help provide the required emotional support and mental/psychological health care to confined patients.