Autonomous Mobile Robot for Transportation of Hospital Carts

Transportation is one of the main activities in intralogistics in hospitals. Various types of items – including food, clothes, medicines, surgical devices, toxic wastes, and etc. – are transported between specific locations. The activities are occurred at all times and mostly performed manually by hospital staffs. These items are appeared in various size and weight. They are frequently stored in storages and transported by using hospital carts. However, the hospital carts weigh between 100 -300 Kg which is concerned a very heavy load for the staffs. As a result, handling these carts leads to serious long term health problems of the staffs. In this research, autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is developed for transporting these hospital carts. The AMR can be operated automatically according to the automatic navigation. It can also operate in follow-me mode in order to follow the user’s movement. This research focuses on the carts with 3 different form factors, which are generally used for pharmaceutical products, food and clothes, and nurse service cart. The robot is equipped with two mechanisms for handling the carts in two modes, including towing and lifting. First, the “towing mode” is used for handling large and heavy carts by grasping at the cart’s handle, so that the carts can be maneuvered. Second, the “lifting mode” is used for handling medium size cart that needs more accurate movement. The controllability of the cart is superior but the payload is limited. Another challenging issue of this research is the development of the robot that complies with mobile robot standards, e.g. ISO13482: Safety Requirements for Personal Care Robot, in order to be operated in hospital environment. The detail development will be presented in this article.