## 5 Conclusions  
Auscultation is an essential process in clinical activity, but its practice has been recently targeted by some challenges. First, the safety of both participants, doctor and patient, is at risk in the presence of airborne diseases (e.g., COVID-19, but also the common cold, chickenpox, and measles, among many others). On the other hand, the auscultation task, which requires the direct contact of the stethoscope with the patient's body, may involve some preparation time, especially in people with physical limitations, such as the elderly. This may represent a barrier for the healthcare professional. In addition, computer systems already exist to automatically classify heart and breath sound abnormalities with a very small error rate [38; 39], paving the way to assisted diagnosis. Hence, the health professional can be released for more differentiated tasks. Finally, there are privacy concerns, as the patient is not always comfortable with the physical exposure that the procedure requires. This article describes a new system that can automatically perform the auscultation process. A state-of-the-art review in the field was first presented, covering both vision systems and robotics, in the medical context or for auscultation. The automation of the auscultation process is still a relatively unexplored area. After providing an overview of the system, all details were thoroughly described. Preliminary results have shown that the robotic platform allows the estimation of auscultation positions for listening to the sounds of four heart valves, based on reference information from the body anatomy, and simulates the placement of a stethoscope while maintaining contact force. The developed robotic platform has the potential to address the critical issue of an increasing demand for healthcare services while offering total safety for the users. This technology can further increase the efficiency of screening for abnormal clinical signs with similar resources, making it also useful as a telemedicine tool.  
As future work, this platform should undergo some changes. For better accuracy in placing the stethoscope at the auscultation points, the patient should be more stable, in other words, the patient should be in a sitting position, as this is also the best position to obtain a precise estimation of points and better auscultation results. The robotic arm will also have to be replaced by another one with a larger reach (since the one used had a limited reach for our purposes, hindering its movements), and to have a larger work area, it should not be mounted on a table, but on a specific platform that maximizes its functioning. The camera should also be placed in a fixed position where it cannot be moved with the slightest touch. To complete the purpose of this platform, a digital wireless stethoscope should be integrated with the gripper.  
Conceptualization, M.F.S. and L.C.; methodology, D.L.; writing--original draft preparation, D.L.; writing--review and editing, L.C. and M.F.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
Partially supported by FCT-UIDB/04730/2020 and FCT-LA/P/0063/2020 projects.  
**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.  
**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.  
**Data Availability Statement:** Data is not publicly available, but the authors can provide limited access for research purpose in the condition of clear authorship attribution.  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.