Secure and Privacy-preserving Indoor Robotics for Healthcare Environments
RESPECT project objective is to create a sustainable European and inter-sectoral network of organizations working on a joint research program aiming to design and develop concrete defense strategies to ensure secure, safe, resilient and privacy-preserving operation of indoor mobile robotics solutions for logistic applications in healthcare environments.
Specifically, the main research objectives of the project are:
- Explore and identify system-specific cyber-physical weaknesses posing security, privacy, and safety threats, in autonomous mobile robots operating in a healthcare environment.
- Analyze surfaced vulnerability issues in conjunction with projected threats and propose defense measures and mitigation strategies towards safeguarding mobile robots operation.
- Define and standardize a minimal set of vulnerability testing procedures and guidelines leveraging and extending the Robot Vulnerability Scoring System for safe and autonomous robotic fleet management in a “safety-critical setting”. The project will be implemented through staff exchanges among different organizations with complementary expertise in cybersecurity, healthcare, cloud computing and robotics from 5 countries across EU promoting transfer of knowledge between industry and academia.
BEL is responsible for the Dissemination and outreach activities time plan, a Dissemination plan that clearly identifies what should be disseminated where and when as well by whom.
Dissemination, outreach, and communication activities will entail the following actions:
- Online demonstration (website)
- Non-electronic dissemination (articles in topic-specific journals, brochures, publications in broadcast media and research papers)
- Interactive demonstration and dissemination (interaction in academic, commercial and socio-economic conferences, stakeholder specific such as the ROSCon, IEEE Security and Privacy, IEEE EMBC, EU organized events, researcher’s night, trade fairs and exhibitions, etc.)
- Hackathon events
- Preparation of an individual Personal Career Development Plan for RESPECT researchers, detailing the research, technological, and transferable skills objectives and training to be received during secondments
- Specify reintegration research objectives and ToK, in-house research training, and RESPECT wide research and transferable skills training to be provided within the context of the project
- Development of the educational curriculum emanating from the RESPECT research activities and integrate in the respective courses of the academic partners pertaining to security, robotics, and healthcare. Publishing of accompanying online webinars on FAIR platforms.
Design and implementation of an exploitation plan:
- Detailed definition of the different exploitation strategies for RESPECT outcomes, the possible business and/or sustainability models and the players to be involved after the end of the project
- Implementation including a market analysis and assessment of the exploitation/business/sustainability potential by the different partners
Artificial intelligence and robotics are key to the transformation of the healthcare industry. For example, they can lead to improved quality of patient care while reducing healthcare expenditures. At the same time, however, advancements in these areas open the door to new types of cyberthreats, making many organisations reluctant to adopt them in the workplace. The EU-funded RESPECT project aims to design and develop defence strategies for the secure, safe and privacy-preserving operation of indoor mobile robotics solutions for logistics applications in healthcare. Central to the envisioned activities is the creation of a European, intersectoral network of organisations involved in a collaborative research programme, jointly working towards the achievement of the objectives described above.
