Simulating and Optimizing Nasopharyngeal Swab Insertion Paths for use in Robotics

The nasopharyngeal swab is the standardized method of collecting specimens for diagnosing COVID-19, among numerous other respiratory illnesses. While there has been interest from the robotics community in the design of robots and manipulators for performing swab collections, detailed simulation and planning for swab insertion trajectories through the nasal cavity is less studied. In this work, we propose a simulation environment with the swab modelled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam, subject to linear elastic collisions coming from the nasal cavity. We evaluate the impact of inserting the swab with different amounts of force. We also leverage the simulation environment to pose an optimization problem that finds trajectories that minimize strain on the swab during the insertion. We find that the optimized trajectories adhere to qualitative clinical advice.