Hospitals are complex and dynamic organisms that are vital to the well-being of societies. Providing good quality healthcare is the ultimate goal of a hospital, and it is what most of us are only concerned with. A hospital, on the other hand, has to orchestrate a great deal of supplementary services to maintain the quality of healthcare provided. Logistics is the most resource demanding service in a hospital. The scale of the transportation tasks is huge and the material flow in a hospital is comparable to that of a factory. We believe that these transportation tasks, to a great extent, can be and will be automated using mobile robots. This talk consequently addresses the key technical issues of implementing service robots in hospitals. In simple terms, a robotic system for automating hospital logistics has to be reliable, adaptable and scalable. Robots have to be semi-autonomous, and should reliably navigate in large and dynamic environments in the hospital. The complexity of the problem has to be manageable, and the solutions have to be flexible, so that the system can be applicable in real world settings. This talk summarizes the efforts to address these issues. Upon the analysis of the transportation tasks and how they are currently handled in hospitals, a navigation system is envisaged. The concept of hybrid mapping is at the core of the solution, making it possible to efficiently represent the environment. Topological nodes greatly improve planning capabilities, and create a redundant layer for localization. The system features automatic annotation, which significantly reduces manual work and offer many advantages beyond robotics. A case study on logistics solutions is finally presented. A robotic solution is tested in a hospital to handle the transportation of blood samples between the clinic and the lab. Without any environmental modification; it is shown that lab turnover time can be reduced from hours to minutes; by simply replacing the human porter with a mobile robot.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Mobile Robots for Hospital Logistics


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2012-01-01


    Remarks:

    Özkil , A G 2012 , ' Mobile Robots for Hospital Logistics ' , EU Robotics Forum '12 , Odense , Denmark , 05/03/2012 - 07/03/2012 .


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629



    Autonomous Robots and Utilization in Logistics Process

    Görçün, Ömer Faruk | Springer Verlag | 2021


    Mobile Robots

    Mihelj, Matjaž / Bajd, Tadej / Ude, Aleš et al. | Springer Verlag | 2018


    Hospital logistics carrying and warehousing equipment

    ZHOU WEIDONG | European Patent Office | 2023

    Free access

    Development of an Autonomous Mobile Robot System for Hospital Logistics in Quarantine Zones

    Nam, Tang Quoc / Tien, Hoang Van / Van, Nguyen Anh et al. | Springer Verlag | 2023


    Hospital full-logistics intelligent robot carrying device

    ZANG QIANG / YANG MING / JIANG ZHENHAI et al. | European Patent Office | 2021

    Free access